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(lass J • 

Book_ 

GopiglitN? 

COPXEIGHT DEPOSIT: 






Keys to Success 

Personal Efficiency 










Editor "Forbes Magazine" 

Author, "Men Who Are Making America" "Finance, 

Business, and the Business of Life," Etc. 




B. C. Forbes Publishing Co. 

299 Broadway 

New York 



^ 

^V' 



&u 



Copyright, 1917, 1918, by 
B. C. FORBES 



JAN 24 1919 



©CLA511388 






To 
DUNCAN 



INTRODUCTION TO KEYS TO SUCCESS 
WHAT IT'S ABOUT 

Nobody can hand you a ready-made key to open 
the door of success. You must fashion your own 
key and find the combination of the lock for your- 
self. 

No magician can waft you to the heights of for- 
tune and fame. You cannot fly there on the wings 
of an aeroplane. 

The road, often rocky, has to be traversed on foot. 
You, and you alone, can supply the motive power. 
You, and you alone, must put forth the necessary 
exertion. No one can remove from your shoulders 
the burden of the effort. You must do your own 
climbing. 

Nor are there any mystic short-cuts. The full 
distance must be honestly, even painstakingly 
traveled. 

Then why such a book as this? 

What help can it afford? 

It can afford either much help or no help: all 
depends upon the spirit in which it is read and used. 

No person sincerely anxious to attain success — - 
and willing to pay the necessary price — can fail to be 
stimulated, aided, enlightened, and encouraged by 
perusing it, for it contains, not solely old-as-the-hills 
platitudes and generalities, but the greatest wealth 
of specific, concrete pointers from our most successful 



INTRODUCTION TO KEYS TO SUCCESS 

present-day men of affairs that has ever been gath- 
ered between two covers. It contains not only the 
cream of the wisdom accumulated by these brainy, 
mature, practical men, but hundreds of illustrations 
of how they applied their wisdom when put to the 
test. It abounds in actual incidents and anecdotes 
from the careers of men who have reached the sum- 
mits toward which we all are pressing, or, at least, 
to which we all aspire: in too many cases there is a 
super-abundance of aspiration but a dearth of per- 
spiration and pressing. 

] I do not feel that I have written the book. Its 
authors, rather, are a hundred or more of our best- 
known captains of industry, statesmen, writers, and 
a few sages of former days. Much of the material 
comes direct from business men who have become 
recognized as the foremost authorities in their line. 
They have given of their best in the hope of helping 
others to rise. 

While there are no escalators to the hilltop of 
success, and while every man and woman must do 
his and her own climbing, yet there is a right road 
to it — and many wrong roads which never lead the 
traveler to the desired goal. 

The aims of the book are : 

First — To guide the reader into the right paths. 

Second — To warn him of difficulties he^will en- 
counter, show him how others overcame similar or 
greater difficulties, and hearten him to wrestle with 
and triumph over them. 

Third — To inculcate correct ideas on what con- 
stitutes worthwhile success, so that the ambitious 
youth may be able, before it is too late, to differen- 
tiate between the true and the false, the tinsel and 



VI 



INTRODUCTION TO KEYSTO SUCCESS 

the real, the showy shadow and the twenty-four 
carat substance. 

Fourth— To invest life with a purpose that will 
yield satisfying joy at the end as well as during the 
early and mid- way stages. 

One comforting thought driven home to me by 
these studies of the careers of successful men, a 
thought which I record in this foreword in the hope 
that it will induce the reader to act, is that an earnest, 
persistent effort to cultivate one "success quality" 
makes the cultivation of other helpful qualities 
very much easier. Indeed, the pursuit of one virtue 
often leads to the attainment of a group of equally 
valuable virtues. 

Take, for example, the cultivation of a good mem- 
ory. Irregular, loose habits are fatal to the training 
of one's memory. By zealously, assiduously, con- 
scientiously, prayerfully concentrating on the build- 
ing up of the memory, a whole battalion of bad 
habits and injurious practices may be, almost un- 
consciously, subjugated. 

Or, take the elementary — but all too uncommon 
— virtue of politeness. You cannot strictly adhere 
to the habit of politeness without eschewing a 
string of minor or major offences of which many 
people are constantly guilty. Politeness breeds 
gentleness, thoughtf ulness, consideration for others — 
unselfishness, in short, and it is selfishness which lies 
at the root of almost all our shortcomings. 

Finally, there is more genuine joy in climbing the 
hill of success, even though sweat may be spent and 
toes may be stubbed, than in aimlessly sliding down 
the path to failure. If a straight, honorable path has 
been chosen, the gaining of the summit yields lasting 
satisfaction. The morass of failure, if reached 

vii 



INTRODUCTION TO KEYS TO SUCCESS 

through laziness, indifference, or other avoidable 
fault, yields nothing but ignominy and sorrow for 
self and family and friends. 

Most of these "Keys to Success" have appeared 
serially in either Hearsts or Forbes Magazine, and 
it was the reception accorded them that prompted 
their publication in book form. Each "Key" is 
here supplemented by a to-the-point, practical 
questionnaire, or exhortation, calculated to induce 
the student immediately to take up and apply in his 
daily activities the quality discussed. The author 
of this part of the volume is a business man who has 
attained national prominence through his success 
in developing young men and in applying to everyday 
business problems ripe knowledge and understanding 
of human beings and their psychology. Use of these 
articles in school has already been inaugurated in va- 
rious parts of the country, and the prospect that this 
volume may become helpful in molding the char- 
acters and directing aright the careers of many of our 
ambitious young men and women has invested the 
compilation of it with deep creative pleasure. 



vm 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

PFRSONAL EFFICIENCY 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

YOU 

Your success depends upon you. 

Your happiness depends upon you. 

You have to steer your own course. 

You have to shape your own fortune. 

You have to educate yourself. 

You have to do your own thinking. 

You have to live with your own conscience. 

Your mind is yours and can be used only by 
you. 

You come into the world alone. 

You go to the grave alone. 

You are alone with your inner thoughts during the 
journey between. 

You must make your own decisions. 

You must abide by the consequences of your acts. 

"I cannot make you well unless you make yourself 
well," an eminent doctor often tells his patients. 

You alone can regulate your habits and make or 
unmake your health. 

You alone can assimilate things mental and things 
material. 

Said a Brooklyn preacher, offering his parishioners 
communion one Sunday: "I cannot give you the 
blessings and the benefits of this holy feast. You 
must appropriate them for yourselves. The banquet 
is spread; help yourself freely. 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

"You may be invited to a feast where the table 
is laden with the choicest foods, but unless you par- 
take of the foods, unless you appropriate and as- 
similate them, they can do you no good. So it is 
with^ this holy feast. You must appropriate its 
blessings. I cannot infuse them into you." 

You have to do your own assimilation all through 
life. 

You may be taught by a teacher, but you have to 
imbibe the knowledge. He cannot transfuse it into 
your brain. 

You alone can control your mind cells and your 
brain cells. 

You may have spread before you the wisdom of 
the ages, but unless you assimilate it you derive no 
benefit from it; no one can force it into your cranium. 

You alone can move your own legs. 

You alone can use your own arms. 

You alone can utilize your own hands. 

You alone can control your own muscles. 

You must stand on your feet, physically and meta- 
phorically. 

You must take your own steps. 

Your parents cannot enter into your skin, take 
control of your mental and physical machinery, and 
make something of you. 

You cannot fight your son's battles; that he must 
do for himself. 

You have to be captain of your own destiny. •? 

You have to see through your own eyes. / 

You have to use your own ears. 

You have to master your own faculties. 

You have to solve your own problems. 

You have to form your own ideals. 

You have to create your own ideas. 

4 



YOU 

You must choose your own speech. 

You must govern your own tongue. 

Your real life is your thoughts. 

Your thoughts are of your own making. 

Your character is your own handiwork. 

You alone can select the materials that go into it. 

You alone can reject what is not fit to go into it. 

You are the creator of your own personality. 

You can be disgraced by no man's hand but your 
own. 

You can be elevated and sustained by no man save 
yourself. 

You have to write your own record. 

You have to build your own monument — or dig 
your own pit. 

Which are you doing? 



5 



How You Can Develop Your Personal 
Efficiency 

Modern psychology has exploded the old idea that 
a man is born with certain mental powers, and with 
these he must be content till the day of his death. 
We all know that if the muscles of our arms are weak, 
we can develop them by exercise; if our touch on the 
typewriter is slow we can speed it up; and if our mem- 
ory is weak we can develop it. It is equally possible 
to develop any other personal qualities if we go about 
it in the right way; but most people haven't the 
remotest idea how to go about it. 

The process is perfectly simple — it escapes us be- 
cause it is so simple. It is nothing more than fixing 
our attention on the particular personal quality, in 
the particular way in which we exercise it in our 
business, for a few minutes each day or each week 
for a sufficient length of time. Unless we get our 
attention sharply on the right point (and that is 
where we need instruction to see the right thing clear- 
ly), and unless we have the patience to keep at it 
persistently for a few weeks or months, we shall not 
succeed; but if we do we shall succeed beyond a 
doubt. 

We get increased personal efficiency not alone by 
sheer development of personal power, but quite as 
often by various compensations. For example, I 
am lacking in "personality," so radically lacking that 
no amount of effort I can make will develop enough 
of it to match the fine analytic power of thinking 
and planning which I have as a native gift. What 
shall I do? Why, naturally I look for a partner who 
has personality but lacks power of analytic thought 

6 



YOU 

and organization, and we two make a team that 
can't be beaten. Many a man knows he is weak on 
a certain side, and yet he persists in undertaking 
duties that require strength in those directions, and 
of course he fails. He is simply a fool to try to do 
what he can't do; and he would be equally a fool to 
be discouraged on that account and not try to do 
all he could with the powers which he does have, 
seeking ways to compensate for his special weakness. 

The first step toward efficiency is the personal check- 
up. 

Self-analysis is not easy for many persons, but 
self-analysis is the first step toward analysis of 
others, and that means mastery of that very helpful 
instrument, modern practical applied psychology. 

On a following page you will find a blank in which 
the various "Keys to Success" are listed in the first 
column, and in the spaces opposite you should check 
each quality by a cross in the proper column. 

In the first column mark the qualities you know 
you are strong in, and which you exercise now 
regularly in your business. 

In the second column check with a cross the qual- 
ities you think you have in good natural development 
but which you do not have an opportunity to use at 
present in business. 

In the third column check with a cross the quali- 
ties about which you do not feel at all sure. 

Beyond the double line we will check the qualities 
in which we believe we are particularly weak. In 
the first column check the qualities in which you 
feel particularly weak and which you require in your 
present or prospective business. 

In the second column beyond the double line 
check the qualities in which you think you are weak 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

but which are not important in your present or 
prospective business. 

In the third column check the qualities which 
you suspect may be weak but about which you are 
uncertain. 

The columns beyond the triple line you should 
use after you have been over this course by way 
of checking up the results — in the first column the 
qualities you have assured yourself you are all 
right in or in which you have attained satisfactory 
improvement, in the second column the qualities on 
which you are still working for improvement, and in 
the third column the qualities for which you have 
found compensations. Every personal quality should 
be accounted for under one of these three heads. 





GOOD 


xm- 

USED 


? 


WEAK 


xm- 

IMP. 


? 


SAT- 
IS. 


WORK- 
ING 


COM- 
PENSA- 
TIONS 


Think 




















Self-Education . . 








































Work 




























































Self-Denial . 












































































































































Health 
















































































Will-Power 




















Self-Respect . 
















































































Self-Reliance 

































































































































































THINK 

The Woolworth Building was once only a thought. 
Thousands of years ago an Egyptian king had a 
thought, and lo! every generation since has gazed 
on its fulfilment — the Pyramids. 

Thought is the parent of progress. Thought 
creates all. Everything springs from thought. Human 
beings are distinguished from other animals by this 
one power, the power of thought. 

The immortals of this world are they who thought 
deeper or more brilliantly than their fellows. 

I recently asked one of America's foremost interna- 
tional bankers, Otto H. Kahn, what one thing more 
than another a young man should do to succeed. 

He replied in one emphatic word: "Think!" 

Harriman liked to drop in unannounced and find 
an executive lying back in a chair, feet on desk, 
"for then I know he is taking time to think," said 
the railroad wizard. 

The Tobacco King, James B. Duke, attributes 
his rise largely to a thought that came to him when 
a young man. "Why can't I do in tobacco what 
John D. Rockefeller has done in oil?" he asked 
himself. "And then," he told me, "I started out 
to do it." Note that: "I started out to do it." 

Henry Ford says: "My advice to business men 
is to reap! a lot and thinjc a lot, and work a lot. I 
startecf that way. I kept on thinking and I am still 
thinking. The habit of analysis, the ability to get 

9 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

under the surface of things and at the vital essentials, 
gives a man a tremendous advantage over those of 
his competitors who do not do likewise." 

"You know, boys," Henry L. Doherty once 
impressed upon one of the remarkable engineering 
classes conducted by his organization, "we study 
too much and think too little. Cultivate ability 
to think, and think straight. A lot of men are 
crammed full of knowledge but don't know how to 
use it." 

Just as the unit of human society is not a man or 
a woman, but a man and a woman, so the basis of 
achievement is not thought or action, but thought 
and action. 

Inventors are notoriously lax, unsuccessful in- 
dividuals for the very reason that most of them, 
after evolving a brilliant idea, do not act and keep 
on acting — do not, in other words, pursue it further 
by carrying it into practice and profiting by its devel- 
opment and application. 

Edison both thinks and acts. That's why he 
has been successful beyond every other inventor 
known to history. The phonograph is the only one 
of his important inventions which worked at the 
first trial. Some of his inventions called for ten 
thousand experiments and one of them for fifty 
thousand! 

The greatest piece of sculpture in the world was 
once only a thought; the thought was hewn into a 
boulder of rough marble — and the Venus of Milo 
sprang into immortal existence. 

The billion-dollar United States Steel Corporation 
of to-day, with its three hundred thousand employees 
and its two billion dollars of assets, was once merely 
a thought, a thought in the brain of a young man 

10 



THINK 

named Charles M. Schwab, who not only conceived 
the idea but went to work and acted on it. 

The great positions are filled, not by the thought- 
less, but by those who think — and follow up their 
thoughts by deeds. 

Kitchener conjured up a vision of an army of 
three millions at a time when Britain had never 
known an army of half of one million. His thought 
saved Britain and France. 

As civilization advances, thought becomes more 
and more vital to success. The time is coming when 
virtually all tasks not requiring human thought will 
be performed by machines. 

To rise above the level of a machine a man must 
develop the power of thinking. Become a thinker, 
learn to produce useful, valuable thoughts and ideas, 
and no machinery inventable by a thousand Edisons 
will ever be able to displace you. 

Germany overran her opponents early in the war 
simply because she had given more thought to war 
and the preparation for war. In the war to follow 
the war — the war of industry and commerce — 
victory will be won by the nation which out thinks 
its rivals. 

Rule-of-thumb methods will no longer suffice for 
either nation or individual. New formulas must be 
the product of thought, of hard, serious, sustained, 
clear-headed thinking. 

For centuries men sought and searched for the 
Philosopher's Stone. You can find the Philosopher's 
Stone — in your own mind. 

What has enabled us to talk from America to 
Europe with wire or without wire? What has given 
us the awe-inspiring science of astronomy? What 
has given us a device capable of weighing the globe 

11 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

on which we live? What has brought forth machines 
on which man may outfly the eagle? 

Thought— Mind. 

What glorious opportunities will unfold for the 
thinker once peace comes! Our old economic, 
industrial, and financial systems have creaked and 
cracked under the stress of world-war. 

Who shall evolve new and better systems? Who 
shall lead in establishing the new order? The think- 
ers, men who have tilled and cultivated their minds, 
men who have thought and thought and thought, 
men who have so exploited their minds that they 
have therein found the Philosopher's Stone. 

The victors in the battles of to-morrow will be 
those who can best harness thought to action. From 
office-boy to statesman the prizes will be for those 
who most effectively exert their brains, who take 
deep, earnest, studious counsel of their minds, who 
stamp themselves as thinkers. 

Unless you strain every power and spend every 
available moment to rise above the level of a ma- 
chine, in future you are more likely than ever before 
to be cast on the heap of the unsuccessful, for machines 
hereafter will do the work of mere automatons. 

Runs a trite saying: "We are the sum of all our 
thoughts." A man's real worth is the quality, the 
value, of his thoughts, his mind. Real riches are 
the riches possessed inside. Mental riches cannot 
be gathered, cannot be garnered, without effort, 
without brain-sweat, without stern exertion. 

Are you thus striving to obtain mental riches? 
To the man of rich mentality it is easy to acquire 
all needful worldly riches. 

There are two main keys to success — Think and 
Work. And the first is : Think ! 

12 



How You Can Develop the Power to Think 

The men who do big things are the men who think. 
Are you one of them? Have you systematically 
cultivated the thinking habit? Be truthful with 
yourself — absolutely truthful. You can't afford to 
be anything else — with yourself. 

If you want to learn to think effectively, first 
of all you must be alone for at least half-an-hour at 
a time — absolutely alone and uninterrupted. 

Men never think in crowds. In crowds they 
are governed by the animal herd instinct, which 
is directly and powerfully opposed to the thinking 
principle, which is strictly individual. A person 
must be alone. 

Some people think best in the morning, some at 
night. Which is your natural tendency? 

Settle that point right now. If you are a morning- 
bird you will not mind going out for a half -hour's 
walk before breakfast, and if you get into the 
country, into the woods, or by a lake, you have 
ideal conditions for thinking. 

The present writer likes the morning best, but is 
so situated that he can't get out into the woods as 
he would like. Instead he is up and around the 
house at least an hour before any one else, and as 
he does his morning duties mechanically from long 
habit he does his thinking for the day. Wife says 
she doesn't see for the life of her how so much time 
can be killed in making a toilet — but she doesn't 
know about the thinking. 

If you are your own boss you can say," I shan't 
be back this afternoon," and go off for a trip in 
the park or country for a good solid afternoon of 

13 



EEYS TO SUCCESS 

thinking. If you are employed, my advice would 
be to go frankly to your employer and tell him 
squarely that you need to be alone to think things 
out, and ask if you cannot have a small room some- 
where, where you can shut yourself up and nobody 
will be allowed to disturb you for at least an hour. 

But what shall you think about? 

Why, the biggest thing in your life at the time 
being. But whatever you start in to think about, 
think it through to the end, till you reach a con- 
clusion that at least satisfies you as the right one, 
the genuine mathematical solution of your puzzle, 
or of some stage of it. 

Take out a pencil NOW and write down the 
several things you know it is your duty to think 
through to a decision. 

Then number these in order of importance — No. 
1, the most immediately important, or the biggest 
and most vital; No. 2, next on the list, and so on. 

How long do you think you ought to take to 
think through to a conclusion the first item on your 
list? 

See if you can't do it on schedule, and be ready to 
take up the next item. 

And how shall you test your thinking? 

Why, by constituting your friends a "conference 
board," or an "expert staff," like the board of 
directors of a corporation. 

Of course, you must write out your line of thought 
and take it to the person most likely to be a good 
judge. Ask your friend how that impresses him. 
Then take it to another friend. If you get two 
or three to agree with you, you are probably right in 
your conclusions. 

Nothing ever comes of assigning a thinking job 

14 



THINK 

to two or three persons at one time. One does the 
thinking. Then the staff members try to pick his 
thinking to pieces. They often send the thinker 
back to do his thinking job all over again. You 
want to be prepared to do your thinking jobs over 
many times. That is the scientific method — 
trying, testing, and trying again, thus getting grad- 
ually nearer and nearer to the truth. 
^ Is this your habit of mind? 

Are you training yourself to be a thinker? 

Is there any reason why you should not start right 
now? 

No? Then START! 



15 



SELF-EDUCATION 

Education is not merely "a" key to success; 
it could almost be called "the" key to success. 

No uneducated, uncultured person is really suc- 
cessful, for true success consists less of money than of 
mentality, an inward thing, not an outward thing. 

Education is both a means to an end and an end 
in itself. 

Without education, no man or woman can reach 
the highest pinnacle of success. 

But education does not consist of school learning. 

Our education comprises the sum total of what 
we know. 

Our education comes, or should come, from our 
daily experiences in life. 

Education is observation rather than perspiration. 

Books form the groundwork of one's education. 
Without well-directed, diligent reading, few persons 
can hope to become really educated or cultured. 

But all wisdom is not contained between the 
covers of books. 

We can learn daily from all sorts and conditions 
of men and women and children, from what we see 
going on around us, from what we hear. 

Self-education can become one of the pleasantest 
of habits, and certainly it is of all habits the most 
profitable. 

Education — knowledge — means power. It begets 
ability, and ability means advancement. 

16 



SELF-EDUCATION 

The records reveal that not half of our most 
successful men of affairs received a college education 
and that many of them never completed even the 
common school course. 

Andrew Carnegie was taken from school when 
only about ten. 

William L. Douglas, who became governor of 
Massachusetts and also one of the world's largest 
manufacturers of shoes, received hardly any schooling 
at all. 

The most notable man on the Pacific coast, 
Robert Dollar, lumber king and steamship owner, 
left school at twelye and was exiled in a remote 
Canadian lumber camp, far from civilization, where 
he at one stage could scarcely read or write; he is 
now a notable public speaker and the author of a 
fascinating volume of "Memoirs." 

James B. Duke, the tobacco king, had scanty 
schooling. 

Edison was cast out of school when about seven 
because he was adjudged by the teachers too stupid 
to learn! 

George Eastman, of Kodak fame; E. C. Simmons, 
the greatest hardware merchant in the world; 
Henry Ford; F. W. Wool worth, the largest retail 
merchant in the world; Henry C. Frick, the coke 
king and steel master; John G. Shedd, head of 
Marshall Field & Company; James A. Farrell, 
president of the greatest industrial organization In 
history, the United States Steel Corporation; 
Thomas E. Wilson, the famous packer — these and 
hosts of others who have made their marks received 
a very moderate amount of school education. 

But most of them have become educated men, 
men of wide knowledge, men of powerful mentality, 

17 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

men of the keenest observation, men of the soundest 
judgment, men who have studied human nature as 
well as business. 

Andrew Carnegie had a tutor even after he 
graduated to a Fifth Avenue mansion. 

Discussing this subject of education in course of 
a series of articles in the Wall Street Journal on 
"Characteristics of Captains of Industry," I re- 
marked that: "There is hardly a captain of industry, 
no matter how meager his schooling when a boy, 
who has not become an educated man, a man of wide 
knowledge, of keen judgment, a student of human 
nature. Most financial and business leaders have 
also contrived to steep themselves in history, and 
particularly the biographies of the world's most 
famous achievers. (Napoleon, I find, is their 
favorite study.) 

"Even the busiest of financiers and captains of 
industry find time to read a great deal. Quite a 
few of them, including Otto H. Kahn, to mention a 
financier, and Daniel Guggenheim, to mention an 
industrial giant, have a cast iron rule to read for at 
least an hour every night before going to sleep, no 
matter how late they retire. 

" Only the other day I ran into one of our foremost 
railroad presidents, Daniel Willard of the Baltimore 
& Ohio, and found he was wrestling with an advanced 
book on French — a change of occupation from the 
time he was sleeping all night in an engine house 
on a pioneer road out West so as to be able to get up 
two or three times during each night to feed the 
fires with wood in order to keep the engines from 
freezing. 

"Frank A. Vanderlip, head of the National City 
Bank, has a theory of education for young men which 

18 



SELF-EDUCATION 

appears to have been followed by the majority of 
our famous men of affairs. Says Mr. Vanderlip: 
'In addition to doing a full day's work at his bench 
or his desk, a young man should daily devote another 
day to studying all about his work or his profession 
so that he can better understand the meaning of 
everything he does, the why and the wherefore of 
it, the principles underlying it, and thus equip him- 
self to rise to any height.' 

"I have been struck with the fact that com- 
paratively few American youths whose parents 
paid for their university course have reached the 
topmost rung of the ladder. Perhaps I should 
rather say that it is astounding to note how many 
of those at the very top had to work their own way 
through college. We don't appreciate anything 
we get for nothing, 'tis said. This manifestly applies 
with special truth to university training. The 
fellows who by their own sweat and their own self- 
sacrifice had to pay for their learning derived most 
benefit from it. They were wise enough to make 
the most of their opportunities. This also taught 
them frugality. 

"Darwin P. Kingsley, president of the New York 
Life Insurance Company, existed a full college year 
on $165; he earned his tuition by ringing the college 
bell, 'an experience,' he once remarked to me, 
'which so thoroughly taught me punctuality that 
I don't believe I have ever been a moment late for 
an engagement in my life.' Vanderlip's year at 
college cost him $265, so economically did he live. 

"That a college education, however, is not 
essential to tremendous success in business has been 
demonstrated over and over again. Did you ever 
stop to think that scarcely one of the men who 

19 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

have made the very greatest business marks in 
America graduated from college? 

"John D. Rockefeller never graduated even from 
high school. Harriman was neither an A. B. nor 
an A. M., nor was James J. Hill. George F. Baker, 
now the dean of America's bankers, is not a college 
man. I do not think that one of John D. Rockefeller's 
partners was a college graduate, nor is his present- 
day successor as head of Standard Oil, A. C. 
Bedford." 

Let me repeat, however, that whether poorly 
educated or well educated in youth, almost every 
notably successful man I have ever met clearly 
revealed that he had not gone through life lazily 
or with unobserving eyes or inattentive ears, but 
had exercised his mentality to the very limit. 

The vitally important thing for the young man 
or young woman is, first, to realize the value of 
education, and then to cultivate earnestly, aggressive- 
ly, ceaselessly, the habit of self -education. 

Education is to the brain what food is to the body. 
Without fresh supplies of knowledge the brain will 
not develop healthily and vigorously any more than 
the body can be sustained without fresh supplies 
of food. * 

The mind can be trained to become as a magnet 
which attracts true steel but ignores dross. 

The mind must be disciplined to absorb useful, 
helpful valuable information, and to ignore whatever 
is not helpful or valuable. 

Education is really a matter of selection — a matter 
of selecting what we shall become interested in, 
selecting how we shall employ our time, selecting 
things that will increase our knowledge and wisdom 
and power, or the reverse. 

20 



SELF-EDUCATION 

Competition is so keen to-day that only the well- 
informed person can hope to draw ahead of the 
crowd. 

No corporation, no firm, wants an ignorant em- 
ployee for a responsible position. 

"Andy, here is a young man who knows as much 
about this mill as I do," was how young Charlie 
Schwab's boss introduced him to Andrew Carnegie 
and that was how Schwab's phenomenal rise start- 
ed — through his knowledge, through his self-educa- 
tion in all matters pertaining to the production of 
steel. 

Let no young man or woman feel discouraged 
because of meager schooling. I know of a woman 
who learned Greek after she was almost seventy; 
she learned it because she wanted to be able to read 
the New Testament in its ancient language. 

It may require effort, it may require rigid self- 
discipline, it may require painful self-denial to switch 
from careless, idle habits to a course of study. But 
very soon the pleasure derived from the good habit 
will immeasurably outweigh the false pleasure de- 
rived from the bad habits. 

When the most successful of our present-day 
leaders were youths the facilities for self -education 
were lamentably meager. 

To-day there are not only facilities but induce- 
ments on every side. 

You cannot open a magazine or newspaper which 
does not contain announcements of educational 
courses of one kind or another. 

Perhaps the most helpful and practical are the 
courses of study prescribed by the leading corre- 
spondence schools, or institutes, as some of the very 
best are called. 

21 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

One excellent institution, for example, offers a 
business course which I know has proved of ex- 
traordinary benefit to thousands of young men as 
well as ambitious business men, including execu- 
tives, of middle age. 

Then there are courses in law — and it is re- 
markable how many men have found a knowledge 
of law of great help to them in handling their daily 
problems. 

There are courses, too, in accountancy — and many 
promotions have likewise been won through possess- 
ing a grasp of the fundamental principles of keeping 
accounts. 

r, A course in English, if wisely selected, is also well 
worth while. 

i In short, there is no self-education need which 
cannot be obtained by the average American youth 
if he can but muster the will to learn. 

Self -education consists chiefly of reading, observa- 
tion, conversation and reflection. 

"Knowledge," says Sir Thomas Lipton, "should 
be a compound of what we derive from books, and 
what we extract, by our observation, from the living 
world around us. Both of these are necessary to 
the well-informed man; and, of the two, the last is, 
by far, the most useful for the practical purposes 
of life. The man who can combine the teachings 
of books with strong and close observation of life, 
deserves the name of a well-informed man, and 
presents a model worthy of imitation." 

It is true that in many homes the facilities for 
quiet reading, study and reflection are far from 
ideal. Yet the young man or woman thus un- 
fortunately circumstanced will, if sufficiently in 
earnest, find a way to overcome this difficulty, either 



SELF-EDUCATION 

by visiting a public library, joining an evening 
school, becoming a member of the right kind of a 
club, or arranging to study in company with some 
companion whose home environment is more con- 
ducive to study. "Where there's a will there's a 
way." 

By becoming better educated than the average 
and by keeping your mind on helpful subjects, you 
will not only qualify for higher financial rewards and 
for positions of wider responsibility and influence 
and power, but you will lay up for yourself riches 
which "neither moth nor rust doth corrupt," riches 
which will become valuable beyond price to you in 
later life when the things which money can buy 
cease to satisfy and one must find pleasure and 
satisfaction and joy from the inward, not the out- 
ward life. 

In old age millions can do little for a human being; 
the mind alone can yield that which counts. 

The motto of Forbes Magazine is "With all thy 
getting, get understanding." Self -education will 
enable you to get the other things and also "under- 
standing." 



23 



How to Plan and Carry On a Course for Self- 
Education 

By long odds the chief means of self-education is 
systematic reading. Those who spend an hour or 
two hours daily on trains travelling to and from 
business have a splendid chance for systematic 
reading. They can soon accustom themselves to 
the crowd and the noise, and ignore them completely. 
Let us plan an interesting reading course right now. 

Biography. Among the biographies every one 
should have read are — Lincoln, Washington, Franklin 
(Autobiography), Edison, Napoleon, Alexander the 
Great, just for a start. "Men Who Are Making 
America" (B.C. Forbes Publishing Co.) gives short, 
fascinating biographies of fifty of our leading 
financial and business men. How many of these 
books have you read already? Which will you 
decide right now to start on next? 

Science. Popular writings of Tyndall, Huxley, 
and Spencer, and the easy Science Primers series — 
chemistry, physics, biology, sanitation and hygiene, 
botany, geology and mineralogy, economics and 
sociology, and also modern psychology. Which of 
these subjects do you know something about? Which 
will you select to make a start on now? You will 
not be able to get very deep into these sciences, but 
you will at least have some notion what they are 
about, and from all of them you will absorb a con- 
ception of the method of modern science, which is 
precisely the method which ought to be used in the 
study of all business problems. 

History. Have you read extensively in American 
history — something more than a superficial school 

U 



SELF-EDUCATION 

history? I recommend the American Statesman 
series. The "Life of Henry Clay" by Carl Schurz 
covers fifty years just before the Civil War, and is 
remarkably well written. Such a book as Parkman's 
"Oregon Trail" shows how the northwest was 
opened up. Motley's "Rise of the Dutch Re- 
public" will prove a very interesting study of 
Europe that will be of special interest to Americans. 
Every American ought to be familiar with the 
American romance of Prescott's Pizarro and other 
tales of Mexico and Peru. The present writer 
enjoyed immensely J. A. Symonds' "History of the 
Renascence in Italy." For a general history 
Guizot's "History of Civilization" is excellent, and 
for English history Green's "Shorter History of 
the English People" is the one classic. Which of 
these have you already read? Which will you 
choose for a starter now? 

Literature. Have you read Shakespeare's 
"Merchant of Venice," "Hamlet," "Julius Csesar," 
"Tempest," "Taming of the Shrew," "Much Ado 
About Nothing," "Midsummer Night's Dream," 
"Othello," "King Lear?" ^ Have you read the 
chief works of the great novelists — Scott ("Ivanhoe," 
"Kenilworth"), Dickens ("David Copperfield," 
"Pickwick," "Tale of Two Cities"), Thackeray 
("Vanity Fair"), Hugo ("Les Miserables"), Dumas 
("Three Musketeers"), Balzac ("Country Doctor," 
"Caesar Birroteau," "Eugenie Grandet")? Among 
Americans, Poe's short stories ("Gold Bug," "Pur- 
loined Letter," "Murders in Rue Morgue"), Haw- 
thorne's "Twice-Told Tales" and "Mosses from 
an Old Manse," and the "Scarlet Letter," Cooper's 
"Last of the Mohicans," "Deerslayer," and "Prai- 
rie," and Irving's wonderful "Sketch-Book" and 

25 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

"Alhambra"? We can leave poetry to those who 
have a taste for it. Which of these books have you 
read? Which will you read next? Decide right now. 

Fundamental Education. Are you weak on spelling, 
punctuation, grammar, use of words? On Arith- 
metic? On Geography? Get a really elementary 
correspondence course if you can, and also find a 
private teacher to drill you. Make it a practice 
course from start to finish to correct bad habits 
by doing the same exercise over and over tilt you can 
do it right. Merely reading about these things will 
do little good — only the practice exercises will correct 
your bad habits. Most school courses are very poor. 
You will have to hunt to find a good teacher. On 
which of these will you start first? Decide now. 

Technical Education. Last of all, you need to 
study the technic of your own business, and it is 
surprising how many persons in business know noth- 
ing about the latest developments in their own line. 
For this purpose, first go to the library and find some 
of the best technical books — get advice from the 
librarian or from a good professor in a technical 
school, and get abreast of the times. Have you 
ever read even one current technical book? If you 
read one you will read many. Then see what even- 
ing technical school is within your reach. If you 
know of none, look for a good correspondence course 
of a technical character. 

This outline is very sketchy, but it will enable 
you to check over your own actual present education 
and will reveal to you where you probably are 
weakest. The great thing is to devote at least one 
hour each day systematically. In a few years you 
will be astonished at how your mind has developed, 
as well as at your increased knowledge. 

26 



IDEALS 

Ideals are the most powerful force known to man. 

They are more mighty than armies with banners. 

They can create armies — greater armies than the 
Kaiser and all his junker Generals can create, as 
America is now demonstrating to the whole world. 

One thing, and one thing alone, is strong enough to 
arouse the United States from the somnolence of peace 
and to force or entice her into war — idealism, ideals. 

America has never fought a war for material gain, 
never fought a war for conquest, never fought a war 
for expansion or imperialism. 

Her every war has been born of ideals, most often 
the ideal of freedom. 

This idea] inspired the war of '76, just as it in- 
spired the war of '61; in one case the people fought 
for freedom for self, in the other for the freedom of 
the colored race. The Spanish war was waged to 
bring freedom to a New World people who were being 
oppressed by a decadent Old World power. 

And what is this World War but a war begotten 
by clash of ideals, a war waged by us for freedom, 
for the freedom not of one people, not of one color, 
not of one race, but all mankind, including even 
those now our enemies? 

For no other goal, for no less a prize, would the 
United States have unsheathed her sword and 
offered the sacrifice of so many of her noblest sons. 
America came to recognize that the victory of 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

Prussianism would mean the banishment of ideals, 
the enthronement of tyrannical, barbarous might, 
the doom of all that this Commonwealth holds dear, 
of all that it has fought and bled for, of all that it 
embodies, of all that it is. For, do not forget that 
the German Emperor blatantly and bitterly told 
Ambassador Gerard that once he had conquered 
Europe he would bring America under his sharp- 
spurred heel. 

The ideal of Prussia is might, "Our strong sword," 
autocracy. 

The ideal of America is right, freedom, democracy. 

And because our ideal is bred of justice, because 
it is in accordance with the onward trend of the 
universe, because it partakes of the very nature of 
the Lord God Almighty, it must and shall prevail. 

In the soft days of peace the ideal of America was 
beginning to be misunderstood. Other lands were 
beginning to picture our ideal by the $ sign. It 
may even be that our national ideal was beginning 
to be lowered, to be materialized, to be tainted with 
greed of gold and lust of ostentation. 

But the call, the crisis, has not found us wanting. 
The pristine national ideal has reasserted itself 
with a force, a power, a strength that has dazzled 
the world. No golden calves disfigure our altars. 
We worship not Mammon. We are dedicating our 
all — our blood, our treasure, our resources — to the 
Cause, to that same Cause, that same ideal, which 
gave this nation birth. 

No nation's greatness long survives the lowering 
of the greatness of its ideals. 

And, as with nations, so with individuals. 

Low ideals and high station cannot long retain 
company. 



IDEALS 

The world of affairs, the financial, the industrial, 
the commercial world, never observed and never 
demanded as high ideals as to-day. 

Business ideas to be colossally successful to-day 
must embody, must partake of the ideal. 

The $ sign is no longer "almighty." Dollar- 
making must not be inconsistent with Service; 
rather must it be wedded to Service. 

The firms, the institutions, the companies, the 
corporations having the highest ideals are the 
ones that are to-day universally recognized as the 
most successful. 

So with executives: the ones who are in keenest 
demand, the ones who command the largest salaries, 
are the ones who have impressed the public with 
their fairness, their integrity, their character. 

We have outgrown many old, unworthy practices. 
Rebates, the bribery and corruption of legislators, 
"yellow dog funds," the debauchery of buyers, the 
"fixing" of judges, illegal, cut-throat competitors — 
such secret, underground, unwholesome practices 
are no longer rife, no longer countenanced, no longer 
condoned. 

* Lawyers now receive fewer fat fees for coaching 
corporations on how to get round laws; more fees 
are now paid to show corporations how to comply 
with laws. 

In business mere cleverness is at a discount. The 
man who has ideas is not sought after if his ideas 
do not harmonize with ideals. 

Ideals and "I deal" should mean the same thing. 

We all must have ideals unless we are content to 
drift along aimlessly, ambitionless, ineffectually. 
Ideals vitalize. Ideals energize. 

We must fix clearly before us our ideals and then 

29 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

press on towards them as the captain steers for his 
port. 

Without ideals we sail without a chart, we tread 
an undefined, unfenced path from which we are con- 
stantly in danger of falling or straying. 

Ideals light up the journey of life. They are as 
"lamps to our feet." 

The life barren of ideals is as a dark sky barren 
of stars. 

Our ideal can be to us a veritable "cloud by 
day and pillar of fire by night" and can lead us 
to our desired haven as surely as the cloud and 
the pillar of fire led Moses towards the Promised 
Land. 

Ideals can buoy us up. Ideals are to life what 
air is to the pneumatic tire, what gas is to the 
dirigible, what wings are to the aeroplane. 

Our ideals enable us to separate the dross from 
the precious metal, the dirt from the diamonds. 

The man without ideals is as a watch without a 
mainspring. 

The man with ideals, the man who refuses to 
tarnish or barter his ideals no matter how high the 
price offered can never feel abjectly poor, can never 
feel bankrupt in mind and spirit and soul. He will 
retain a sense of wealth and worth which no multiple 
of millions could ever instil within a scheming, 
unscrupulous Croesus. 

You have read time and again how the faces of 
the dead on the Allied battlefront seem to shine 
with radiant peace and contentment, how they appear 
to be lit up with something far transcending a smile — 
with "an indefinable glory," as one correspondent 
expresses it. May not the explanation be that our 
soldiers and the soldiers of our Allies, aglow with 

30 



IDEALS 

the consciousness that they are fighting and dying 
for a glorious Cause, for that same Cause for which 
Christ himself gave His life, reflect in death the spir- 
it animating them in life, in battle? 

What has raised up Woodrow Wilson far above 
the statesmen of any other land? What has won 
for him the gratitude and the homage of every free 
nation of the world? 

Not his decision to fight Germany. Not his 
achievements as Commander-in-chief of America's 
army and navy, superhuman though our war activi- 
ties have been. No, not that, not these. 

Woodrow Wilson has become the foremost figure 
of the whole human race because he, better than 
any other statesman, has expressed the ideals for 
which the Allied nations are fighting. 

Wilson the idealist has become infinitely greater 
than Wilson the president. 

His utterances, his messages, have been worth 
many army divisions. They have rallied and quick- 
ened and strengthened the Allied forces as no mere 
augmentation of armaments could have done, and 
have, by the same token, confounded and weakened 
and demoralized the spirit, the morale of the enemy 
as no number of cannon or rifles or battleplanes 
could have done. 

Ideals need not be airy, vapory, unpractical things, 

The idealist need not be an idle dreamer. 

No man indeed, can become a really great doer 
who has not first been an idealist, who has not had 
before him, as a shining, guiding star, a fixed ideal 
towards which he steadily, courageously, unflinch- 
ingly pressed onward and upward. 

Arid in the world of to-morrow ideals are to play 
an even more important, an even more vital, an 

31 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

even more practical part than they played in the 
world of yesterday. 

For ideals the war is being waged. 

Peace will bring the enthronement of these ideals. 

The ideals of nations are but the embodiment, 
the combined embodiment, of the ideals of in- 
dividuals. 

What standard are you helping to set for the 
Commonwealth which in time is to be the pattern 
for every other nation on earth? 

How near do your ideals measure up to the ideals 
of those who are laying down their lives that we 
may live? Are we worthy of the price that is being 
paid? 



32 



How You Can Cultivate High Ideals 

The difference between a person with ideals and 
one who lacks ideals is the difference between the 
person who guides his life by what he sees and knows 
and can touch with his hands, and the person who 
has enough of the visionary in him to adopt as his 
guide a dream which has not yet come true and 
perhaps may never come true. It is the difference 
between a person shut within four walls mentally, 
and the person who stands out under God's infinite 
sky and looks at the natural horizon of the earth — ■ 
the difference between the person who never gets 
his eyes off the material things about him and the 
person who is always looking out to the very limits 
of his vision even when he knows he never can reach 
the distant country he dimly descries. 

Where are your eyes — on the dollars and cents 
you are handling, or on your mental horizon? Or 
to change the figure, how many degrees do you 
elevate your eyes from the ground? If you always 
walk with your eyes downward so that you can see 
only the earth beneath your feet, you have no ideals. 
If you habitually carry your eyes on your mental 
horizon, that is as far as you can see at all, so you 
now and then catch a glimpse of the sky above, you 
are guided by ideals. The person whose eyes are 
in the sky all the time, not focussed at the horizon, 
the meeting of earth and sky, is a visionary — he 
walks with nothing firm and fixed to guide him. 
But the man whose eyes are on the horizon is imbued 
with the mysticism that a sane American ought to 
have, and lives a big, broad, human life that takes 
in the whole world. He sees himself as part of 

33 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

the universe, with a sense of playing his part as 
a citizen, as a human being partly responsible for 
all the other human beings in our great American 
republic or even now in the other countries of the 
world for which the United States is assuming 
responsibility. With the Great War, America great- 
ly extended her mental horizon, she found she had 
responsibilities as a leader among nations, and she 
began to spend billions of money she had no idea 
she would ever really get back. The world said 
the circle of the dollar was the boundary of the 
American horizon, that Americans as a nation were 
a little "nigh," that they lacked the splendid 
generosity with which the British and the French, 
for example, threw themselves and their money into 
the war for world freedom. But when the time 
was really ripe, the American people woke up to 
their hidden and neglected ideals and at one bound 
surpassed all the world. The twentieth century is 
the century of ideals, and if you are not a person 
of broad ideals, it is time you woke up and became 
one. 

Let us take the matter up point by point in your 
case. 

How do you treat your office-boy, your stenog- 
rapher, your bookkeeper? Do you give them a 
little more than you feel they are at present really 
worth? Or have you a mean pride in getting their 
services for a little less than they are worth? Be 
sure if you pay them less, you get still less, but if 
you give them more you get still more, just as Henry 
Ford when he advanced his wages to a minimum 
of five dollars a day increased his earnings many 
times the increase of wages though Dodge Brothers, 
who were Ford stockholders, said they felt as if he 

34 



IDEALS 

"reached down into their pockets and lifted a 
million dollars out." In the long run there is no 
such thing as beating the game of business — the 
game gets you sooner or later if you have set your 
mind on getting the best of the game. 

But how about your ideals outside of your busi- 
ness? Do you give some time every month to 
public service as a citizen with the responsibility 
of a citizen? Perhaps you say, Why should I do a 
lot of work for nothing? I will leave that to those 
who like to work for nothing? But they don't work 
for nothing. They get the highest personal pleasure 
and satisfaction that any man can have. If you 
don't know the pleasure there is in that sense of 
public service, go out right now in your little home 
district, join the welfare or civic association, and see 
what you can do for the public good : you'll be prouder 
of yourself than a peacock, and you will have begun 
to be an American with American ideals of service. 



? ? ? ? 

I am the foundation of all business. 

I am the fount of all prosperity. 

I am the parent, most times, of genius. 

I am the salt that gives life its savor. 

I am the sole support of the poor. 

The rich who try to do without me deteriorate,, 
languish and fill premature graves. 

I am the primeval curse, yet a blessing without 
which no healthy man or woman can be happy. 

Nations that woo me ardently rise; nations that 
neglect me die. 

I have made the United States what it is to-day. 
I have built her matchless industries, opened up her 
rich minerals, laid her incomparable railways, reared 
her cities, built her skyscrapers. 

I have laid the foundation of every fortune in 
America. 

I alone have raised men up from the ranks and 
maintained them in positions of eminence. 

I am the friend and guide of every worthy 
youth. If he values me, no prize or place is beyond 
his reach. If he slights me, he can have no enviable 
end. 

I am the sole ladder that leads to the Land of 
Success. 

Sometimes men curse me, seeing in me an arch 
enemy, but without me life turns bitter and meaning- 
less and goallesse 

36 



? ? ? ? 

I must be loved before I can bestow my greatest 
blessings and achieve my greatest ends. Loved, I 
make life sweet and purposeful and fruitful. 

Fools hate me; wise men love me. 

The giants who fill the presidential chairs of our 
railroad systems, our great industrial organizations, 
our colossal mercantile establishments and our 
institutions of learning, almost without exception, 
owe their places to me. 

I can do more to advance a youth than can the 
richest of parents. 

I am the support of the millions; indirectly, the 
support of all. 

I am the creator of all capital. 

Wealth is but me stored up. 

I am represented in every loaf of bread that comes 
from the oven, in every train that crosses the con- 
tinent, in every ship that steams the ocean, in every 
newspaper that leaps from the press. 

I am sometimes overdone — voluntarily by the am- 
bitious, involuntarily by the oppressed and by 
thousands of the very young. 

But in moderation I am the very oxygen of 
the ablebodied. Some, sure of my constancy, 
look upon me as loathsome, but a little taste 
of my absence quickly brings them to their 
senses. 

My followers among the masses are becoming 
more and more powerful every year. They are 
beginning to dominate Governments, to overthrow 
anachronistic dynasties. 

I am the mother of democracy. 

All progress springs from me. 

The man who is bad friends with me can never 
get very far — and stay there. 

37 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

The man who is good friends with me, who is not 
afraid of me, can go — who can tell how far? 



Who am I? 
What am I? 



I AM WORK. 



Here are some stimulating statements on work 
by men who have made their work count: 

Sir Thomas Lipton: "Hard work is the cardinal 
requisite for success. I always feel that I cannot 
impress that fact too strongly upon young men. And 
then a person's heart and soul must be in his work. 
He must be earnest, above all, and willing to give 
his whole time, if necessary. Honesty, it goes 
without saying, is necessary, and if you want to be 
wholly successful, you must do unto others as you 
would have them do unto you. If you don't, they 
will be sure to retaliate, when you least expect it. 
If young men would follow these rules, they would 
get along very well; but few of them will." 

Charles M. Schwab: "The man whom you hear 
say he 'never had a chance,' lacks something. 
He lacks that indefinable something that stands 
for success, and if you look far enough you'll 
find that something to be a capacity and a disposition 
for hard work. The only luck I ever had was to be 
born with good mental powers and a good physical 

38 



? ? ? ? 

constitution that thrived on the hardest kind of work. 
I had enough hardships and trials." 

Russell Sage: "I think that work is the best thing 
I know of for improving a man's constitution, 
for it makes a good appetite, and encourages diges- 
tion. It isn't work that ruins so many. It's the 
wine they drink, and the late hours they keep, and 
their general dissipation." 

C. Louis Allen: "I believe, too, in the philosophy 
that hard work, not chance, makes successful men; 
but there are two kinds of hard work — the kind that 
goes along grubbing blindly in the same old routine, 
and the kind that plugs progessively toward a 
definite goal. Men must be adapted to the work 
they are doing, but hard work and self-analysis are 
the principal factors. I am one of those men who 
have little belief in genius so far as the great major- 
ity of successful men are concerned." 

Benjamin Franklin: "Diligence is the mother of 
good luck. Plough deep while sluggards sleep 
and you shall have corn to sell and keep. Work 
as if you were to live one hundred years. Pray 
as if you were to die to-morrow." 

D. O. Mills: "Work develops all the good there 
is in a man; idleness all the evil. Work sharpens 
all his faculties and makes him thrifty; idleness 
makes him lazy and a spendthrift. Work surrounds 
a man with those whose habits are industrious 
and honest; in such society a weak man develops 
strength, and a strong man is made stronger. Idle- 
ness, on the other hand, is apt to throw a man into 
the company of men whose only object in life 
usually is the pursuit of unwholesome and demoraliz- 
ing diversions." 

Irving T. Bush: "Every man should approach] 

39 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

every job with the idea that it is possible to do it 
more efficiently, for less money, and that he is the 
man to find out how." 

Samuel Gompers: "I learned both to think and to 
act, and to feel strongly enough on the great ques- 
tions of labor to be willing to sacrifice my personal 
convenience for my aims. I have felt great devo- 
tion to the common cause of the manual workers, 
and I can say nothing better to young men than — 
'Be devoted to your work.'" 



40 



How to Develop the Highest Efficiency in 

Work 

Dr. Winslow Taylor, the father of scientific 
management, describes in his book a man who was 
carrying pig iron on to freight cars. At the start 
he was carrying 12 tons a day. By following a 
scientific plan of work and rest he became able to 
carry 47 tons with no more fatigue than he carried 
12 tons at first. Later Dr. Taylor found that only 
one man out of a large number was capable of de- 
velopment into a first class pig-iron carrier. Those 
few men thrived and grew strong and happy under 
carrying 47 tons of pig iron a day, while those who 
were not built for that sort of work soon went under. 

Are you doing the kind of work you were built for, 
so that you can expect to be able to do very large 
amounts of that kind and thrive under it? Or 
are you doing a kind of which you can do compara- 
tively little? 

You've got to settle that question for yourself 
by a careful comparative investigation which nobody 
else can conduct for you, because it will take an 
amount of time and study which nobody but you 
can afford to give — you can well afford to study 
that question most thoroughly. 

Will you start the investigation right now, check- 
ing over all the facts and circumstances you know 
already? And then will you go on and look for 
more? 

Do you enjoy hard work, either physical or 
mental, according to your training and occupation? 

If your work drags, if you feel unspeakably weary 
in the morning, and think all day how soon night 

41 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

will come, or rather how long it is in coming, by 
all means have a thoroughly scientific physical 
examination — urine, blood, stomach contents, etc., 
with an analysis of your condition by a competent 
physician to make sure you are not suffering from 
some disease such as diabetes, Bright's disease, 
heart irregularity, tuberculosis in an incipient 
and unnoticed form perhaps in the bones or glands. 
Perhaps your chest expansion is too small. Check 
over your physical condition in your own mind right 
now and decide immediately, while you are still 
reading this, whether you need suspect anything 
of this sort. 

Next, consider most carefully whether your 
habits are such that you are getting the maximum 
amount of work from your body with the maximum 
pleasure and enjoyment in doing it. 

It has been clearly demonstrated that laborers 
can do more work in eight hours than in ten, but if 
they are working only six or seven hours at physical 
labor they are probably loafing. On the other hand, 
six or seven hours of intense office work will tire out 
any person, and the writer or thinker who must 
concentrate with his brain with great intensity 
can tire himself out in two or three hours. 

Just what is the real character of your work, 
and how many hours can you work with maximum 
results? If you don't know, begin now to experiment 
and find out. Lay out for yourself a definite plan 
of testing on this point. 

If you are working for someone else, you may 
say that you cannot regulate your hours of work, 
etc. But to a very large measure you can. Even 
if you have to start on a time-clock and end with 
one, to a considerable extent you can regulate the 

42 



? ? ? ? 

way you will spend the time between, and you may 
be very sure you will get credit for what you ac- 
complish. Explain to your superior how you can 
arrange your time or your work so that you can 
accomplish larger results, and nine times out of 
ten he will be grateful to you for the suggestion 
and will co-operate with you to arrange your work 
so that you can feel fit and happy. 

Any person who robs himself of sleep, or exercise, 
or recreation, or proper time for food is a fool — he 
is not really working hard, he is just imagining he 
is working hard. Get all the sleep, exercise, and 
sound food that you need, and you will find it 
practically impossible to overwork if you are healthy. 
Overwork nine times out of ten is not too much 
hard work, but lack of sleep, exercise, or time and 
pleasure in eating the right food. 

I have said nothing about what to do for laziness. 
Anybody who is downright lazy will never be reading 
this lesson. If you think you are lazy, if you think 
you dislike to work and work ward, check over 
your condition — your health and your habits, 
your sleep and recreation and fresh air, your habits 
of apportioning your time between intense applica- 
tion and proper rest and relaxation during the day. 

What is your defect, your mistake? Find it and 
cure it — and there is no better time to start than 
NOW. 



43 






SAVING 

Saving is the basis of every business success. No 
enterprise can be started without money. 

The man who hasn't saved a dollar is not apt to 
command the confidence, the capital or the credit of 
others. Inability to save suggests the lack of other 
abilities. 

Our most conspicuously successful men of finance 
and business began to save money early in life. 

John D. Rockefeller was a saver before he was 
seven, and by the time he was nine he was quite a 
little business fellow. He is now teaching his grand- 
children how to save. 

Andrew Carnegie had laid the first foundations 
of his fortune before he was of age. 

Henry C. Frick began to save money before he 
began to vote and did not give up the habit after 
he had won his first million. 

Only because he had saved $50 was Frank W. 
Woolworth able to find a position in a dry goods 
store. And this money he had saved under the 
most disadvantageous circumstances; he saved it 
while a lad working without regular pay on his 
father's farm. 

The Armour fortune of to-day was made possible 
only by Philip Armour's industry and frugality when 
a young man working in California. He saved 
$5,000, earned chiefly by digging. 

E. H. Gary, now the head of the Steel Corporation, 

44 



SAVING 

was well on his way towards a competency before 
he was thirty, every penny made by his own efforts. 

We all know that the nucleus of the Vanderbilt 
fortune was laid by the rigid economy of the Com- 
modore's worthy wife. 

George Eastman as a lad was haunted continually 
by the spectre of poverty, and from the day he began 
to work he began also to save every penny possible. 
Had he not done so, he would not have been able to 
start the business which was to make him one of 
the thirty richest men in America. 

Henry Ford had an uphill fight to obtain the 
capital necessary to enable him to start the manu- 
facture of his automobile. Had he not saved a little 
himself, he would not have been able to induce 
others to extend him financial support. 

Julius Rosen wald, multi-millionaire president of 
Sears, Roebuck & Company, made his first money 
peddling odds and ends. He saved every penny. 
(Should I add that this money went to buy his 
mother a wedding anniversary present?) 

A. Barton Hepburn had to borrow money to put 
himself through college, and it was only because he 
was a saver that he was able to embark in business 
at an early age. To-day he is one of the country's 
most successful national bankers. 

"No one can acquire a fortune," said D. O. 
Mills in discussing wealth — of which he had acquired' 
much — "unless he makes a start; and the habit 
of thrift, which he learns in saving his first hundred 
dollars, is of inestimable value later on. It is not 
the money, but the habit which counts. There is 
no one so helpless as a man who is 'broke,' no matter 
how capable he may be, and there is no habit so 
detrimental to his reputation among business men 

45 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

as that of borrowing small sums of money. This 
cannot be too emphatically impressed upon young 
men." 

"I have often been asked," said Sir Thomas 
Lipton, to define the true secret of success. It is 
thrift in all its phases, and principally, thrift as 
applied to saving. A young man may have many 
friends, but he will find none so steadfast, so con- 
stant, so ready to respond to his wants, so capable 
of pushing him ahead, as a little leather-covered 
book, with the name of a bank on its cover. Saving 
is the first great principle of all success. It creates 
independence, it gives a young man standing, it 
fills him with vigor, it stimulates him with the proper 
energy; in fact, it brings to him the best part of any 
success, — happiness and contentment. If it were 
possible to inject the quality of saving into 
every boy, we would have a great many more real 
men." 

"The first thing that a man should learn to do is 
to save his money," says Andrew Carnegie. "By 
saving his money he promotes thrift, — the most 
valued of all habits. Thrfit is the great fortune- 
maker. It draws the line between the savage and 
the civilized man. Thrift not only develops the 
fortune, but it develops, also, the man's character." 

Marshall Field, when asked what he considered to 
have been the turning-point in his career — the point 
after which there was no more danger of poverty, 
replied: "Saving the first live thousand dollars 
I ever had when I might just as well have spent 
the moderate salary I made. Possession of that 
sum, once I had it, gave me ability to meet opportun- 
ities. That I consider the turning-point." 

A man who is unable to handle his own finances 

46 



SAVING 

successfully is little likely to handle successfully 
the finances of others. 

Saving calls for prudence, self-control, self-dis- 
cipline, self-denial. 

Employers to-day invariably ask an applicant 
for a position if he has a bank account. An un- 
satisfactory answer usually brings an unsatisfactory 
end to the interview, since improvidence and im- 
prudence go hand in hand. 

No nation can be strong and powerful unless its 
people save money. 

The establishment of new industries, the building 
of new railroads, the opening of new mines, the erec- 
tion of new buildings all necessitate capital, and 
capital is nothing but money that has been saved. 

Saving, we thus see, is essential to progress in 
times of peace. And during recent months we have 
all learned how essential to victory saving is in times 
of war. 

Your savings are your stored-up labor. They 
represent work you have done but have not spent. 
You can exchange this stored-up labor for things 
you desire. 

The man who spends as he goes seldom goes far. 

The old proverb truthfully says that the fool and 
his money are soon parted. There is no virtue in 
poverty. But poverty often breeds vice and disease 
and all manner of evils. 

The spendthrift is never happy, never satisfied. 
He knows no peace of mind. 

Have you ever known anyone who regretted hav- 
ing saved money? 

Have you not known many who regretted not 
having saved money? 

A bank account raises a man's self-respect, 

47 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

enhances his manliness, increases his self-confidence, 
strengthens his peace of mind and thereby makes 
him a better employee, a better citizen, a better 
father. 

The man who has saved nothing can seldom 
seize business opportunities. 

Many a fortune has been made by a man's ability 
to seize an opportunity when it presented itself, an 
opportunity that called for the prompt furnishing 
of a certain sum of money. 

The man who is dependent upon his next week's 
pay envelope for bis next week's meals is afraid to 
strike out for himself. He cannot afford to take 
any chance, to run any risk, to enter any new field. 
His poverty is as a tether. The poet Burns struck 
the right note when he urged the careful saving of 
money. 

Not for to hide it in a hedge, 

Not for a train attendant, 
But for the glorious privilege 

Of being independent. 



Poverty delayed for several years Columbus' am- 
bition to discover America and brought upon him 
all sorts of indignities, insults and hardships. 

The Old World and the New World would 
not have been linked together by cable so many 
years ago had the project been undertaken by 
a poor man. It was only because Cyrus W. Field 
was a rich man and could command financial assis- 
tance from others that he finally succeeded, after 
very costly failures, in accomplishing his purpose. 

The telephone was almost brought to naught as 
a commercial instrument because of lack of funds. 

48 



SAVING 

Luckily, Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law — 
who had saved money — came to the rescue. 

The exploitation of the reaper was delayed 
several years because the McCormicks were without 
capital to manufacture and market it on a sizable 
scale. 

Had not some people — many people — saved 
money, those of us who live in cities would not be 
able to turn a tap and have water gush forth, or 
to press a button and have our homes flooded with 
light, for the installation of water systems and light- 
ing systems costs money — millions of money, the 
savings of many individuals. 

Nor would we be able to take a street car, a 
subway or an elevated train to carry us to and from 
our work had not frugal persons spent less than 
they earned and thereby accumulated savings which 
were made available for the building of traction 
lines. 

During the war the virtue and the value of saving 
have been brought home to every man and woman 
in America as never before. Had the Liberty Loans 
failed, this country would have been disgraced. 
And they would have been failures had we had 
fewer savers. 

The rational saving of money begets in the in- 
dividual valuable qualities, qualities which are as 
helpful as the qualities begotten by thriftlessness 
are injurious. 

Then, to quote Benjamin Franklin: "Remember 
that money is of a prolific, generating nature. Money 
can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, 
and so on. Five shilling turned is six, turned again 
it is seven and three pence, and so on till it becomes 
one hundred pounds. The more there is of it the 

49 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

more it produces every turning, so that the profits 
rise quicker and quicker." 

It is selfish to save nothing for a rainy day, to 
make no provision for old age, for when adversity 
comes the burden of support then falls upon others. 

Don't be a leaner; stand on your own feet. 

Be able to look every man straight in the eye. 

To save your self-respect, save your money. 

For age and want, save while you may, 
No morning sun lasts a whole day. 



50 



How to Become a Capitalist 

Every person in business in America needs to be- 
come a capitalist to be a success. If he has any 
initiative he wants to get a business of his own some 
time, or reach a position where he can control some- 
body else. But if you are content to be a simple 
employee all your life, still you need capital to 
keep a good job and get a better one. Many a 
man has tied himself for life to a poor job because 
he didn't have the capital to wait for a better one 
and was forced to grab the first one that came his 
way. Whatever your position, it is imperative 
that you should be a big or little capitalist. 

How can you become a capitalist? 

By saving your own money till you've got some- 
thing ahead. A newsboy on the street sells papers 
for another boy until he gets enough money to buy 
his own papers and make all the profit instead of 
half the profit. A boy in the country saves up 
money till he can pay his carfare to the city and 
get a better job, or go to school and fit himself to fill 
a higher position. These are all embryo capitalists. 
The only difference between them and Rockefeller 
or Morgan is one of degree. If we get that fixed 
firmly in mind, that fifty cents is just as much 
capital as fifty million dollars, we have mastered 
our first basic principle. 

The second basic principle is that the person who 
has money can get more. If you have fifty cents, 
very likely you can borrow a dollar to go with it, 
because the lender will say, "Oh, that fellow had 
to work like the devil to save that fifty cents of his, 
and he is the kind that will hang on to my dollar." 

51 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

If a man has five thousand dollars to put up a build- 
ing he can get twenty -five or thirty thousand to go 
with it, or if he has his lot paid for, he can borrow 
the money to build a house. If he has a house and 
lot of his own, he can get credit to buy the goods to 
start a business. 

The chief part of it is the fact that he inspires 
confidence because he saved that money himself — 
not because he has it. If he was known to have 
picked it up in the street, or if someone gave it to 
him as a legacy, he wouldn't get much credit. The 
bigger part of capital is the confidence inspired by 
the way it was saved by the man himself. Money 
the man has made himself is the only real, basic 
capital in business, of course with the money this 
basic capital has drawn to it. 

Now, my friend, what is your situation? Are you 
a saver? 

You say, "I have all I can do to live and pay 
my debts. When I owe people, I can't put money 
in the bank till they are paid off." 

What you want to do is to buy a Liberty Bond 
on the instalment plan — you have to get the money 
to pay for it or you lose it. 

Or perhaps you buy a house on the small payment 
plan. You need something that will automatically 
remind you and force you to save. 

What do you choose as your best savings-corn- 
peller? 

Write it down. 

Perhaps you are pretty well off, have a nice wife, 
a good home, and desirable friends. When you were 
young you saved. Now you have a good start, a 
family that is pressing on you, a business that is not 
expanding, and it is a deuced hard thing to save. 

52 



SAVING 

What are you going to do in that case? 

My advice is to call a family conference — wife 
and children old enough to understand. Make it 
a solemn occasion. State the whole situation brief- 
ly but clearly so they understand it just as you do. 

Make them understand that THEY have got to 
do the saving, which means spending less money. 
Don't cut down their allowances, but make them 
save out of them. Start a bank account for each 
one separately. It doesn't do any good to say you 
will take care of the money for them: they need to 
see it grow. Then you start your savings account, 
and compare notes with all the members of your 
family once a week to see who has relatively the 
nearest his proportionate quota. 

Will you start this plan to-day? 

Write out the plan in detail, so that when you 
call the conference you won't forget the most im- 
portant points or lose your courage. 



53 



OPPORTUNITY 

Ignorance 'is blind. The blind cannot see Op- 
portunity. 

Fit yourself to see Opportunity. Knowledge 
illuminates. 

Mediocre men wait for opportunity to come to 
them. 

Strong, able alert men go after Opportunity. 

The brainiest of men make Opportunities. 

Opportunity can benefit no man who has not 
fitted himself to seize it and utilize it. 

Opportunity woos the Worthy, shuns the un- 
worthy. 

Prepare yourself to grasp Opportunity and Op- 
portunity is likely to come your way. 

Opportunity is not so fickle, capricious, and un- 
reasoning as some complain. 

Opportunity shuns the idle, the worthless, the 
ignorant. 

Great men train themselves to see, seize, mold 
and master Opportunity. 

The echo of the first shot in the European war 
had scarce died away when Charles M. Schwab, 
in post-haste, presented himself at Kitchener's desk 
— and came away with contracts which have led to 
the enrichment of Schwab, his workmen, his stock- 
holders and his country by hundreds of millions of 
dollars. 

Henry P. Davison went to London, convinced 

54 



OPPORTUNITY 

the British authorities J. P. Morgan & Company 
could serve them — and his firm skilfully and prof- 
itably handled several billions dollars of business 
as fiscal agents of the British Government. 

George A. Gaston, a little-known but not unready 
New York business man, was also prompt to see 
Opportunity, and he made such an impression upon 
the British War Office that Gaston, Williams & Wig- 
more, then incorporated, have developed an export 
and import business which already covers more than 
half the earth and runs into tens of millions a year. 

Henry Ford is an instance of a man creating his 
own Opportunity. 

John D. Rockefeller was a youthful produce 
commission merchant in Cleveland when the oil 
industry was born, but, to use his words to me, 
"I saw that there was an opportunity to enter a 
field which could be made as broad as the world, 
something that everybody could use if given it 
cheap enough; so I became interested in oil." To 
quote Mr. Rockefeller further: "There are a hundred 
opportunities to-day for every one there was fifty 
years ago." 

H. C. Frick, the barefoot boy and obscure book- 
keeper who discerned the possibilities of coke and 
was making a million dollars a year when in his 
thirties, gave me as one reason for his success: 
"I worked very hard and always sought Op- 
portunities." 

Thomas E. Wilson, the now famous packer, was 
a $40-a-week railway clerk when Morris & Company 
asked his superior to send them a smart young clerk 
to keep tabs on their refrigerator cars. The man 
sent returned hastily, refusing to work in "so smelly 
a place." "Let me go," said young Wilson. He 

55 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

went — and became president of Morris & Company. 
Now he heads Wilson & Company, successors to 
Sulzberger & Sons Company, one of the largest pack- 
ing enterprises in the world. 

E. H. Harriman was an inconspicuous stock 
broker when he spotted Opportunity in the form of 
the possibilities of rehabilitating the bankrupt and 
dilapidated Union Pacific Railroad. Through that 
door he entered millionairedom. But a less well- 
equipped aspirant would neither have seen the 
Opportunity nor been able to master it. 

James J. Hill was equally obscure and equally poor 
when he likewise took hold of a bankrupt little rail- 
road and made it the stepping-stone to higher things. 

Three of the first five stores Frank W. Woolworth 
opened were failures, but he kept chasing Opportun- 
ity until he learned to locate it here, there, almost 
everywhere. 

John N. Willys hadn't a thousand dollars when 
he jumped in and saved the Overland Automobile 
Company from imminent collapse. His heroic, 
indefatigable, never-say-die handling of that Op- 
portunity paved for him the way to fortune. 

"Are you a believer in opportunity?" Theodore 
Roosevelt was asked. He replied: "To a certain 
extent. Many of the great changes in our lives 
can be traced to small things, a chance acquaint- 
ance, an accident, or some little happening. ^ A 
time comes to every man when he must do a thing 
or miss a great benefit. If the man does it, all is 
well. If not, it isn't likely that he will have the 
chance again. You can call that opportunity if 
you wish, but it is foresight that leads a man to 
take advantage of the condition of things. Fore- 
sight is a most valuable thing to have." 

56 



OPPORTUNITY 

The Biblical story of burying the talents in a 
napkin is merely a sermon on Opportunity. The 
brother who diligently seized Opportunity became 
"ruler over many things." The other who loafed 
lost even what he had. 

How are you using your talents? 

Are you zealously, industriously, painstakingly in- 
creasing them? 

Or are you letting them lie dormant, rusting and 
rotting? 

Opportunity can be spelt with four letters. 

But these letters are not L-u-c-k. 

They are W-o-r-k. 

"Opportunity" thus speaks: 

Master of human destinies am I ! 

Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait. 

Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate 

Deserts and seas remote, and passing by 

Hovel and mart and palace, soon or late 

I knock unbidden once at every gate ! 

If sleeping, wake; if feasting, rise before 

I turn away. 



57 



How You Can Find or Make Your Opportunity 

At this point you will probably remark im- 
patiently, "Where does good luck come in? You 
talk as if I were responsible for everything, that 
all the elements of success were in me, in myself." 

Yes, it is a terrible pity that you should be de- 
prived of the scapegoat of bad luck, and that you 
should be deprived of the satisfaction of unloading 
responsibility for your failure on some one or some- 
thing else. And I admit it is going the limit when 
I talk about "finding or making your opportunity. " 

Of course there is such a thing as luck — it is all 
around us, it is with us every day. The world is 
streaked with sheer bad luck. But there is so 
much bad luck that every one suffers from it at 
times, the so-called luckiest as well as the unluck- 
iest. And that's the point of it — opportunity, the 
opposite or counterpart of bad luck, comes and goes, 
the bad alternating with the good and the good 
alternating with the bad. The world is just chock 
full of good luck and bad luck — of opportunity 
and waiting for opportunity. And success lies in 
taking your bad luck cheerfully, and in never 
letting your good luck go by. If opportunity seems 
persistently to avoid you, there is certainly some- 
thing the matter with you, and it is high time you 
looked into the matter to find out what the trouble 
is. 

Here again all the personal qualities seem to come 
into play. Any one of them may be the reason 
why opportunity passes you by. Turn back to the 
first lesson of this course. Check yourself all over 
again and see why opportunity does not seem to 

58 



OPPORTUNITY 

like you. Is it your personality? Or do you lack 
courage? Or haven't you judgment to recognize 
the good thing when it is before your eyes? 

We will suppose, however, that you have checked * 
over all your personal qualities and do not find any 
sufficient explanation for your lack of opportunity. 
A writer many years ago was in New York but 
seemed unable to get any of his books published. 
Were they so bad no publisher could afford to bring 
them out? Or was good writing not appreciated 
in New York just then? He decided to try London, 
and within a few weeks after arriving in that city 
he had made contracts for two books rejected in 
New York. But for two years he couldn't make 
any money in London, and made up his mind that, 
while recognition there was easy, cash was not, 
and so he moved on to Chicago. There were very 
few publishers of any kind in Chicago, but it was 
the center of sale for half the books issued in the 
United States, and after a while the author pub- 
lished his own books and sold them by the hundred 
thousand sets. With reputation and highly devel- 
oped skill, in the course of time this same writer 
needed distributing machinery for his works. It 
didn't exist in Chicago, but when he moved on to 
New York he found it waiting for him, eager to 
handle his publications on a large scale. So he 
had come back to his starting place, but had found 
his opportunity in each city he had visited. Moral: 
Pursue opportunity and you will catch up with her 
in time. 

Now what is your next move? After checking 
over your character, check over your situation 
and circumstances in the same way — make a list 
of their advantages and disadvantages and come to 

59 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

a sane conclusion where you ought to look next for 
opportunity, or opportunities. If you have had 
some opportunities, may there not be many more 
and bigger ones which you have missed simply 
because you never thought to look for them? Make 
a list of all the possible ones and consider them one 
by one on all sides. 



60 



SELF-DENIAL 

Sweating early in life will prevent suffering late 
in life. 

Most mortals have to face difficulties, undergo 
hardships, toil and sacrifice at one period of their 
earthly journey. 

The man who idles away his youth and early man- 
hood, who chases pleasure instead of achievement, 
who prefers dalliance to diligence, who woos indul- 
gence instead of industry, who seeks the nectar cup 
rather than the iron wine of success, is destined to 
pay the penalty of lost opportunity in after life. 

There is an eternal law of compensation; it may 
seem to sleep, but it never does sleep. 

This law was proclaimed of old in these words: 
"As ye sow, so shall ye reap." 

The wise man will choose to do his exertion while 
yet he is young, while yet he can strain brain and 
body with zest and with impunity, while yet hardship 
and fatigue and self-denial sit lightly on his forehead 
and daunt not his spirit. 

He elects to pay the price of a happy, comfortable, 
poverty-free old age when he is best fit to pay it. 

Voluntary self-denial at the beginning of life's 
journey will avert involuntary poverty, stress, sweat 
and indignity towards the end. 

Every human being must put something into the 
world before he can hope to get all he reasonably 
needs out of the world — even millionaires' offspring 

61 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

are less exempt from this decree than we sometimes 
are tempted to imagine. 

You have to contribute before you can collect. 

You have to sow before you can reap. 

Self-denial is a basic ingredient of genuine success 
— mere rolling up of riches, by hook or by crook, is 
not necessarily a token of success. 

Call the roll of this nation's most illustrious doers 
and note whether or not they practised self-denial. 

Washington was wealthy, but he loved his country 
more than he loved his own ease, and did not hesitate 
to undergo strenuous and perilous days and nights 
to attain a glorious ideal. 

Lincoln's learning and wisdom and statesmanship 
did not descend unsought and unearned from the 
skies. How many studious hours he spent while 
others about him idled and played; what measure of 
self-denial he practised during the preparatory years 
of his obscurity, who can reckon? 

Edison slaved sixteen and eighteen hours a day 
before he won a foothold on the ladder of fame. 
When he arrived in New York he had to beg a tea- 
taster for a cup of tea, so starved and penniless was 
he. Years later difficulties innumerable overtook 
him, and at one stage he feared he could not pull 
through. But even then he gave way to no despair. 
"If the worst comes to the worst, Sam, I can return 
to the telegraph key and you can get a job as a short- 
hand writer," he told his faithful young aid, Samuel 
Insull, now head of the greatest electric power enter- 
prise in the world. 

Alexander Graham Bell and Theodore N. Vail 
were reduced to borrowing quarters for lunch money 
before they succeeded in establishing the telephone on 
a paying basis — they indulged in no two-dollar meals. 

62 



SELF-DENIAL 

But for rigid self-denial and extraordinary de- 
termination in the teeth of a thousand discourage- 
ments, McCormick, the farm worker, would not 
have given the world the reaper, and mankind 
might still have been confronted with the im- 
memorial spectre of famine. 

Charles Goodyear almost starved to death in his 
long, disheartening effort to evolve a substance that 
would become an invaluable servant of man. To- 
day the rubber industry is ranked fourth among 
the great industries of the land. 

Fulton did not flinch at hardship and self-sac- 
rifice to produce the first steamboat that sailed 
up the Hudson. 

Elias Howe subordinated every consideration 
of personal comfort during the years he toiled to 
bring forth the sewing machine. 

Cyrus W. Field, though rich, did not disdain to 
become poor and to incur every species of self- 
sacrifice in order to span the Atlantic with his civiliz- 
ing cable. 

Turning to men still alive: 

Henry Clay Frick, coke and steel king, con- 
tinued to live in one room after he was making a 
million dollars a year, so anxious was he to conserve 
his capital for the expansion of his business. 

James B. Duke, the tobacco king, for exactly the 
same reason, lived in a hall bedroom costing $2.50 
a week and ate all his meals at an East Side (New 
York) lunchroom when earning $50,000 a year, 
and not until he was earning $100,000 a year did 
he move into a $4-a-week room. 

Andrew Carnegie's mother used to take in shoes 
to sew for Henry Phipps's father, a shoemaker, 
and Andy himself, for a period, worked overtime 

63 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

every night for an extra dollar a week, and in- 
cidentally, denied himself all sorts of pleasures so 
that he could save money. 

Henry P. Davison, the greatest of all the Morgan 
partners, cycled through New York's streets ten 
miles to and from work every day to save ten cents 
when he first got a job as a teller in a small New 
York bank. His nights were spent in study. 

Frank A. Vanderlip, president of the country's 
largest national bank, began in a machine shop, 
saved enough while toiling at a lathe to go to college 
one year. His total living and educational ex- 
penses, thanks to unbending self-denial, amounted 
to only $265. Moreover, he adopted as his success 
maxim one he has ever since preached: "Every day, 
after doing your day's work, put in another day's 
work studying what its relation is to the scheme of 
things" — another form of self-denial. 

Bake your cake in the morning or noonday of 
life and when old you can live on it. 

If you begin by denying yourself nothing the 
world later is apt to do your denying for you. 

Deny self, or be denied. 



64 



What Self-denial Is Reasonable and What Is 
Unreasonable 

In this world both extremes are bad — wisdom is 
in the golden mean. In the matter of indulging in 
luxuries or starving yourself, are you hitting the 
happy middle course? 

If you are young, self-denial is a cardinal virtue; 
and 3 you are old and have made money, you are 
a mere miser if you don't spend it. The boy who 
works his way through college and boards himself 
in his room, cutting the amount and variety of his 
food down to the danger point until he is sent to a 
hospital, is a fool — he would have done better to 
stay on the farm. Baron Rhondda, food ad- 
ministrator of England, though he was rich, indeed, 
very rich as the largest owner of anthracite coal 
mines in Britain, wanted to set an example of 
self-denial to the people of England and lived 
strictly on the diet that he recommended to them — 
but he lost thirty pounds in weight and then 
died. He made a splendid sacrifice — but was it 
wise? 

The greatest danger lies, however, in most cases 
in unwisely following what is thought to be the 
golden mean. Many a young man spends very 
nearly all he earns. His salary is not large, and 
he can't indulge in many luxuries on it at best. He 
feels virtuous to think he really manages to live 
within his income, or to sponge on his father only 
a little. He doesn't go to the theatre often, but 
sometimes; he plays a game of billiards now and 
then, or joins the boys at poker for a small limit. 
These indulgences require a great deal of time and 

65 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

thought to make them just balance with conditions — 
with the small salary. Self-indulgence is syste- 
matically cultivated, where self-denial ought to be as 
systematically cultivated. 

Which are you cultivating — the art of moderate 
self-indulgence or the art of reasonable self-denial? 

You don't have to starve yourself, you don't have 
to work yourself to death, you don't have to forego 
all pleasures — but if you want to get on in life, to 
accumulate in youth that which will give you a 
competence in old age, you must systematically 
and thoughtfully cultivate self-denial. 

Are you doing it? 

Answer honestly and frankly to yourself. If you 
can't be entirely honest with yourself, with whom 
can you be honest? 

There are other forms of self-denial than those 
which pertain to mere money. The whole basis 
of an unselfish character is self-denial. You can 
deny yourself the pleasure of making an unkind or 
cutting remark which will do no good to anybody 
but may spring spontaneously to your lips and 
give you a certain satisfaction to speak. You will 
get a far deeper satisfaction by refraining from say- 
ing it. 

Perhaps in business you are quick to see how 
you can take advantage of an opportunity to make 
a profitable turn. You get a certain satisfaction 
out of realizing on your cleverness. But you will 
in the end get a far greater satisfaction out of denying 
yourself the privilege of taking advantage of this 
opportunity if it is going to be at the expense of 
somebody else who doesn't happen to be looking, 
somebody who really is robbed because his attention 
is turned. Self-denial is at the bottom of the 

66 



SELF-DENIAL 

American business principle of Service. Instead 
of being a squeezer, you carefully protect all your 
customers against being squeezed by you or anybody 
else — and you get paid big dividends on your 
restraint. 



67 



STICK-TO-ITIVENESS 

"We shall reap if we faint not." 
— Galatians, chapter VI, verse 9. 

Diamonds are chunks of coal that stuck to their 
job. 

If it has taken millions of years to develop man- 
kind, must we fret if it takes us a few years to rise 
above the rank and file of mankind? 

Must we quit if we don't get there quickly? 

Note this: There is not one major figure in 
American financial, industrial or commercial life 
to-day under forty. Not one. 

And what of the past? 

The original J. P. Morgan, though born rich and 
reared as an international banker, was sixty before 
he did his greatest work and nearer seventy before 
Wall Street, in its hour of trouble, acknowledged 
him as its undisputed leader. 

Harriman at fifty was an obscure broker with a 
penchant for railroading. 

Hill's hair was gray before he became Empire 
Builder of the Northwest. 

At fifty Woodrow Wilson was a little-known col- 
lege professor. 

Washington was no youngster when he won the 
immortal title of "Father of His Country." 

Lincoln midway through life was in the coal, not 
the diamond, class, and was fifty-two before he loomed 

68 



STICK-TO-ITIVENESS 

up as Presidential calibre. He was fifty-four when 
he made his imperishable address at Gettysburg. 

But all were stickers. They conceived their 
goal and pressed on courageously, unflinchingly, un- 
swervingly, hurdling more obstacles than you or I 
are ever likely to meet. 

Most people show more persistency in their first 
twelve months than they show later in twelve years ; 
did they not, they never would have learned to 
walk. 

Robert the Bruce six times failed to free Scotland, 
but a struggling spider on the wall which climbed up 
successfully after six falls revived his courage, and at 
the seventh attempt Bruce won a crown and un- 
dying glory. 

Charles M. Schwab was president of the world's 
first billion-dollar corporation before he was thirty- 
five, lost his steel throne, dropped from the lime- 
light for a decade, but during this time he redoubled 
his efforts and he has done his greatest work since he 
crossed the half-century mark. He did not quit. 
He stuck. 

The two most influential bankers in America to- 
day, George F. Baker and Jacob H. Schiff, average 
seventy years of age, while such leaders of the "young- 
er school," Henry P. Davison, Frank A. Vanderlip 
and Otto H. Kahn, have all lived half a hundred 
years or more. 

There is not one leading railroad president in the 
whole land not old enough to be a grandfather. 

Ninety per cent, of America's business leaders be- 
gan at the bottom — of the fifty men voted the great- 
est business stalwarts in the country not half a 
score were born to luxury. 

At least forty of them sweated blood before they 

69, 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

gained a foothold on the ladder, sweated and toiled 
with brain and often with body from early morning 
to late at night, many times all night, tasting defeat 
but never despair. 

Employers to-day shun shifters. 

There is no market for rolling-stones. 

Life is so specialized that jacks-of -all-trades are 
wanted by none. 

To last, a man must stick to his last — he cannot 
hope to be a good shoemaker to-day and a capable 
plumber to-morrow. 

The pace to-day calls for men of red blood, not 
of white livers, men of grit, not grouch. 

Stickers, not sticklers, are wanted. 

"Tenacity is the only key that will open the door 
of success," recently declared Daniel Guggenheim, 
head of the greatest mining and smelting family 
America has ever known. 

"What one trait of your character do you look 
upon as having been the most essential to your 
successful career?" Marshall Field was once asked. 
"Perseverance," he replied without hesitation. 

E. H. Harriman's favorite motto was: "Many 
spoil much good work for the lack of a little more." 

When Edison was asked, "What do you think is 
the first requisite for success in your field, or any 
other?" he replied: "The ability to apply your 
physical and mental energies to one problem in- 
cessantly without growing weary. I never did 
anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of 
my inventions come indirectly through accident, 
except the phonograph. No, when I have fully 
decided that a result is worth getting, I go about it, 
and make trial after trial, until it comes." 

Said Ben Franklin: "Perhaps you are weak- 

70 



STICK-TO-ITIVENESS 

handed, but stick to it steadily, and you will see 
great effects, for constant dropping wears away 
stones, and little strokes fell great oaks." 

Even a postage stamp knows enough to stick till 
it gets there. 

It is stick-to-itiveness that has made both nations 
and individuals great. 

Decay and decline come only when nations or in- 
dividuals relax, when they become slack, slothful and 
shiftless. 

" The moment a man feels he can rest on his laurels, 
that moment he begins to slide back; he must stick 
at it and at it," says Thomas E. Wilson, the former 
penniless stockyard clerk who became a national 
figure through displacing by his own firm name that 
of Sulzberger & Sons Company after a career the 
very embodiment of stick-to-itiveness. 

Is it not the literal truth that America, as we know 
it, owed its discovery by Christopher Columbus to 
this very virtue of stick-to-itiveness? 

Without stick-to-itiveness no man is likely to 
climb to the top of the ladder — and stick. 



71 



How to Develop Staying Powers 

Of course if you are lacking in patience and persist- 
ence, this course of study will not make you over. 
But personal effort can and will increase any mental 
power by several degrees, and those few degrees 
may mark the turning point of your life. 

It is said that when the Allies in the Great War 
were bombarding the Turks at the Dardanelles the 
Turkish ammunition had become exhausted and in 
a few more hours the Allies would have seen that the 
Turks were at their mercy and perhaps could have 
captured the great strategic situation for which they 
sacrificed so many lives. Whether this was actually 
true in this particular case or not does not matter: 
very often a similar situation exists in American 
business life — a few more days or weeks or months 
will turn the downhill slide into an upgrade, and the 
very momentum of the down slide will bring you 
up on the other side of the valley. 

Do you know when to hang on and when to let 
go? 

Reviewing the little things of your past life, do 
you see places where you would have won out if you 
had stuck a little longer? If you do, you need to 
start at once to develop your power of stick-to-itive- 
ness. 

A boy out of school gets a job in an office. In six 
months he has learned something about the business 
and is beginning to be valuable.^ Another business 
house notices that and offers him a dollar a week 
more. He 1 eaves and goes to the other house. For 
six months he works to learn as much about the new 
business as he already knew about the old one when 

72 



STICK-TOITIVENESS 

he left it, and some third business offers him still 
another dollar. In this third business he works for six 
months and learns as much about that as he knew 
about either of the first two when he left them. 
Something happens and he loses this job — perhaps 
he is sick — and he is glad to start over again at his 
first wage. 

If he had stuck to the first business, in eighteen 
months he would have been so valuable to the house 
that they would have held his place for him while he 
was ill. And at the end of three years he would have 
been among those from which the firm would choose 
in filling any important position that might have 
become vacant — probably at a very large increase 
of pay. 

Did you shift about from one house to another in 
that way when you started out? If so, it was a sign, 
and very likely you are more or less casting here and 
there at present in your business, never hanging on 
to one idea till you make something good out of it. 

The first thing is to have something worth sticking 
to. Take a pencil and write down a list of the things 
in your business or life which you feel are best worth 
having. 

Why have you failed to get them ? 

Which one of the lot is most important of all? 

You can't very well stick to two things at the same 
time if they happen in the slightest degree to be 
pulling in different directions. 

If you want to cultivate stick-to-itiveness your 
first step should be to settle on one big, important 
thing. Then say to yourself, "I am going to stick to 
that for five years anyway." 

Some men are one-year stickers, some three-year, 
but only a few are five-year. If you are only a one- 

73 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

year sticker, fix your eye first on three years for 
your project, and at the end of three years make it 
five. 

Of course you don't want to stick to a dead 
horse; but you want to be mighty sure the horse is 
dead before you give him up, for a horse is a valuable 
animal — like opportunity. 

Another thing you ought to do is to go over your 
plan step by step and see whether it is reasonable — 
whether it ought to succeed. 

Every time you do this, if you are actually convinc- 
ed that you are right, you will become more firmly 
intrenched, and it will be easier to stick. It doesn't 
do much good to go around asking people whether 
you ought to stick or not — that is something you 
alone can decide, and you gain strength to persist 
if you stand squarely on your own good judgment. 

Will you do this? Do it firmly? Do it at once? 



74 



CHEERFULNESS 

Success is the summit we all seek to attain. 

We can step on no escalator or elevator and be 
whisked up without exertion. 

The road is steep, steep as a ladder, and the exer- 
tion of brain and muscle is necessary to climb it 
step by step, painstakingly, pluckily, perseveringly. 

Cheerfulness is one step. 

Gain it early. 

Success in business, if not in life itself, is simply the 
art of pleasing. 

The problem of capital is to keep labor content. 

Corporations now refuse to elect crotchety ex- 
ecutives or managers or superintendents or foremen, 
for a crotchety overseer makes crotchety, dissatisfied 
men. 

Promotion to-day is for the cheerful, not the 
choleric. Wise employers give preferment to good- 
tempered, enthusiastic employees, since a grouchy 
manager never yet inspired loyalty among his men. 

To place a cantankerous individual in charge of a 
business or men is to pitch a crowbar into the ma- 
chinery. 

A happy boss oils the whole plant — laughter is a 
lubricant. 

What mean pensions, profit-sharing, sick bene- 
fits, compensation for accidents, group insurance 
and the like? Are they not but means to the one 
great end, the making of men satisfied? 

75 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

Dissatisfaction breeds carelessness, indifference and 
all manner of inefficiency. 

Cheerfulness is the parent of competency. 

The longest face is apt to be awarded the shortest 
envelope. The longest envelope is most likely 
to go to the fellow whose presence and personality 
inspire, stimulate and encourage others. 

"I would give a million dollars to have Charlie 
Schwab's smile," J. Ogden Armour, head of the 
$500,000,000-a-year packing business told me. 

Schwab himself attributes no small part of his 
success in building up a business employing 75,000 
men to his inexhaustible sunshine. 

If a smile can be worth a million, why cultivate 
a frown, for which there is no market? 

The Lackawanna Railroad dismissed a superinten- 
dent solely because he could not handle men har- 
moniously. 

There is philosophy in the motto overhanging 
many a desk: "Smile, darn you, smile." 

It is true, also, as declared by Theodore N. Vail, 
telephone king, that "The voice with the smile 
wins." 

Smiling will carry you farther than swearing. 

Everybody prefers to do business and to associate 
with a pleasant rather than a peppery person. 

"A happy man or woman," said Robert Louis 
Stevenson, "is a better thing to find than a five 
pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of good 
will and their entrance into a room is as though an- 
other candle had been lighted." 

"A man too careful of danger liveth in continual 
torment, but a cheerful expecter of the best hath 
a fountain of joy within him," wrote another sage. 

John Hays Hammond, the world's most noted 

76 



CHEERFULNESS 

mining engineer, told a New York University 
class: "One must be an optimist to be successful. 
As Shakespeare says, 'A merry heart goes all the day, 
your sad tires in a mile-a.' One of the worst things 
that a young man has to carry around in life is the 
grouch. I tell you it gets very heavy as the years 
run on. The man who fancies that the world owes 
him a living and starts in complaining because some- 
one else succeeds, trying to apologize for his own delin- 
quency, is a pretty poor fellow and gets very little 
sympathy." 

Dame Fortune most often smiles on those who 
smile. 

Were Commodore Vanderbilt alive to-day he 
would not act on the axiom, "The Public Be Damn- 
ed," but on its twentieth-century successor, "The 
Public Be Pleased."^ 

Frank A. Vanderlip, head of America's biggest 
bank, will engage no high-salaried man who has 
not demonstrated that he has the knack of making 
many friends. 

One malcontent in an organization is as a rotten 
apple in a basket of fresh fruit. 

Mankind's chief mundane end is the pursuit of 
happiness. 

Learn to be cheerful and you will come near being 
happy. 

It has been scientifically proved that worry, dis- 
cord and melancholy undermine health. 

Good spirits make for good digestion. 

Cheerfulness costs nothing, yet is beyond price. 

It is an asset both of business and of body. 

The big men, the leaders of to-morrow, will be 
those who can blend cheerfulness with their brains. 

The wise owner will not enter his horse if it be in 

77 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

a funky mood, for he knows the race is already 
lost. 

Life's race can best be run with a light heart and 
a buoyant countenance. 

It was the original J. P. Morgan who proclaimed 
that only an optimist could win in this country. 

Optimism and cheerfulness are brothers. 

Cheerfulness will open a door when other keys 
fail. 



78 



How to Cultivate Cheerfulness 

Cheerfulness and freedom from worry are two 
sides of the same thing, for it is physically impossible 
to feel cheerful and worry at the same time. 

Cheerfulness is also a habit of mind, and it can be 
cultivated just like any other habit. Some business 
concerns require all employees to say "Thank YOU" 
after taking every order. Others require employees 
to say "Good morning" to everyone as they come 
in and "Good-night" as they leave. Just saying 
those words habitually makes the person feel more 
or less cheerful. The muscles of the face are set 
in the cheerful mold, and by reaction that produces 
the cheerful feeling inside. That is a well dem- 
onstrated principle of psychology. 

Worry is a killer of cheerfulness. The person 
who worries about big or little things, during periods 
of worry draws a veil across the cheerful side of 
life and shuts out the sunlight of good humor. 
Cheerfulness needs to be cultivated on the negative 
side of making a campaign against the worry that 
drives it out. 

But you say, "I don't know how to keep from 
worrying. When things go wrong, I just can't 
help it." 

You can help it if you resolutely set your mind 
on something that may become of greater interest. 

Psychology teaches that the way to shut out one 
feeling is to surrender oneself to some other that is 
stronger and "inhibits the other current in the 
mind." The person who is very busy seldom has 
time to worry. If because of weariness work must stop 
and worry is likely to come in, turn resolutely to 

79 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

recreation of some sort, to some pleasure, or to 
physical exercise. Either of these is a pretty sure 
cure for worry. 

Lack of cheerfulness often comes from self- 
absorption. A man is so occupied with his business 
that he can't seem to stop to be cheerful, or to let 
people around him know that he is feeling all right 
inside. On the contrary, he is likely to be abrupt, 
to shout his orders in a rasping tone, and without 
knowing it he gets the whole office-force by the 
ears. All that is sheer bad habit — you can cure it in 
a month if you will only set yourself to make the 
mental effort. You have no idea what you can do 
with yourself till you try. 

Here is your range for self-checking. 

Have you the mechanical habits of settling your 
exterior muscles for a smile, for a pleasant word, 
for a cheery good morniug or a kindly good-night? 
If not, start in at once to cultivate those purely 
mechanical habits. 

Do you worry? If so, begin at once to fight the 
tendency by never giving yourself time or op- 
portunity to worry. Turn resolutely to work, 
to recreation, or in any case to physical exercise 
till you are so tired you can't help going to sleep, 
and when you wake up you won't want to worry. 

Have you been careless about the right of others 
to have a cheerful tone from you, a gentle smile, a 
kindly manner? Unless you change that rasping 
manner of yours you will some day pay a terribly 
heavy business penalty. 



80 






TEAMWORK 

Unless you are a teamworker you are little likely 
to succeed under modern conditions. 

Civilization is built on teamwork — is teamwork. 

Savages do not practice teamwork. Each goes 
forth in search of his own food; each builds his own 
hovel (if he has one) ; each makes his own loincloth; 
each hews his own canoe (if he uses one). Each is 
independent of the others. Each is self-contained, 
self-sufficient, so to speak. And the life of each is 
precarious, uncertain, comfortless. 

But the moment savages realize the advantages 
of teamwork and act on their new intelligence, they 
cease to be out-and-out savages and begin to travel 
the path that leads to civilization. 

Even civilized peoples formerly practiced little 
teamwork. Each tilled his own little patch, wove 
his own rude clothing, traveled solely in his own ox 
cart or on horseback, built his own primitive 
dwelling, found his own (natural) fuel, made his 
own crude candles, baked his own bread, made his 
own soap. 

To-day all these things are done by teamwork. 

Teamwork has given us fine homes, palatial apart- 
ment houses, giant hotels. 

Teamwork has given us machine-made clothing, 
machine-made shoes, machine-made foodstuffs, 
machine-made necessities and comforts of every 
description. 

81 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

It is teamwork that has displaced the canoe by 
the ocean liner, displaced candles by gas and electric 
light, displaced logs and peat by coal from mines, 
displaced the prairie schooner by steam and electric 
railways and Pullmans and automobiles and air- 
planes, displaced the hook and the scythe by the 
reaper and the binder, displaced the spade by the 
plough and the tractor. 

All trade, all commerce, all industry sprang from 
teamwork. 

So did our schools. So did our churches. 

Stop teamwork and we would revert to an un- 
civilized mode of life. 

But teamwork will not be stopped. 

The trend is towards greater and still greater 
teamwork. 

This trend, indeed, never before was so pro- 
nounced. 

The world war has resolved itself into one colossal 
matching of teamwork. 

Germany had a long and a strong start, for her 
rulers, invested with autocratic power, had welded 
the people into a nation of teamworkers, all working 
for and serving one common aim and end. 

The Allies for over three years had no teamwork — 
and paid a terrible penalty. But finally, thanks in 
part to the Chief Executive of our own nation, they 
were prodded into taking concerted action, into 
agreeing to submerge all personal and national pride, 
preferences and prejudices for the sake of securing 
teamwork under the direction of one supreme head, 
Generalissimo Foch. 

Armies represent superlative teamwork. With- 
out teamwork, armies would be little better than 
mobs. Their whole strength lies in their con- 

82 



/ TEAMWORK 

certed action, the perfect co-operation of each soldier 
with all the others. 

And modern business — Big Business — what is it 
but teamwork on a colossal scale? 

Who can produce this teamwork? 

Why, team workers, of course, and none but 
teamworkers. 

All of which leads up to this statement, the hub 
and nub of this whole article. 

Big Business will advance to positions of great 
responsibility no man who has not demonstrated his 
ability and aptitude as a teamworker. 

A widely known out-of-town banker was being 
selected by the National City Bank of New York 
as a vice-president. Salary — a large one — had 
been agreed upon and other arrangements completed. 
Then he wrote wanting to know precisely where he 
would rank among the institution's list of vice- 
presidents and laid stress upon his "standing." He 
was immediately dropped. "He will not make a 
good teamworker," was the management's verdict. 

I once recommended an exceptionally capable 
man to a large organization. The executive, im- 
pressed with the man's knowledge, ability and 
experience, indicated that an important position 
would be given him. Nothing, however, resulted. 
"We checked him up carefully," the executive 
later explained to me, "and found that he is a hard 
man to get along with. We can use only team- 
workers here." 

"I don't know who the Steel Corporation will 
be able to get to succeed Judge Gary," remarked 
a business man familiar with the workings of that 
mammoth organization. 

"There are not many men qualified to handle 

83 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

successfully all the presidents and other heavyweight 
executives of the corporation's various subsidiaries. 
The Judge has a big team to keep satisfied and, at 
the same time, up to the scratch." The explana- 
tion? Judge Gary knows how to inspire and main- 
tain teamwork among his scores of high-priced, 
high-placed aides. 

Had not Lincoln been able to evolve teamwork 
from his brilliant but high-strung, erratic Cabinet 
officers, the Civil War might not have ended when 
it did. He was big enough and broad enough to 
handle even the eccentric geniuses with whom he 
was surrounded. Often he submitted to what 
others, had they occupied his place, would have 
regarded as intolerable humiliation. 

That's one secret of the successful team worker — 
he doesn't wear a chip on his shoulder; he doesn't 
look for slights; he is not constantly on the alert lest 
his "dignity" be insulted. 

The teamworker need be no jelly-fish. He 
need never compromise his self-respect. He need 
never sacrifice his principles. He need not be 
forever ready to forswear his own opinions or his 
own convictions. 

The teamworker can be — must be — every inch a 
man. 

But he is something more. 

He is a diplomat. He is not bigoted. He recog- 
nizes that others, especially his superiors in rank, 
are also entitled to have opinions and convictions 
of their own. He is ready to give and take. He 
does not expect to have everything his own way, to 
get always exactly what he wants. He is broad 
enough to try to see things from the other party's 
point of view. 

84 



TEAMWORK 

The teamworker, also, is courteous, considerate, 
good-tempered. 

He tries to meet others at least half-way. 

He is accommodating, obliging, helpful. 

He co-operates. 

He is more concerned about getting things done 
than about getting credit for the doing of them. 

He puts the good of the house, the firm, the insti- 
tution, the company first. To him it is the big 
machine, and the business of each and all is to gear it 
up to its highest pitch, to strain every nerve to in- 
sure that it shall run efficiently, to leave nothing un- 
done to bring about the fullest and best results. 

He sees his life, his career, his future, not as a 
separate entity, not as the one thing about which he 
must concern himself, "looking out for Number 
One"; but as part and parcel of the concern of which 
he is a part. He reasons that his supreme duty is 
to see to it that the concern prospers, and that if 
the whole prospers, he, as an active, effective, pro- 
gressive part of it, is likely to prosper with it. 

He has his eye and his mind less on himself, less 
on his individual aggrandizement, than on his in- 
stitution. 

He sinks self in service. 

And then, having done this, and having continued 
to do it if need be for years, Fortune will not forever 
pass him by. 

Sooner or later Opportunity will come within his 
reach. 

Henry L. Doherty defines as the very first and the 
most important key to success, Ability to get along 
with other people. A man who has mastered that 
faculty has the one great essential to success. 

"Can you recommend a man of superior calibre, 

85 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

a man of executive timber, a man I could trust with 
real responsibilities?" a business leader asked Cap- 
tain Robert Dollar, the Pacific Coast lumber and 
steamship owner. "If I knew of such a man, 
unattached, I'd grab him myself," was the veteran 
captain's reply, 

I know of more than one highly paid official 
who has been edged out solely because he failed to 
develop into a teamworker when growth made the 
engagement of additional officials imperative. 

Credit in the long run usually goes to those who 
seek it least but deserve it most, not to those who 
strive to monopolize it. 

Teamwork calls for a certain amount of unselfish- 
ness. 

It calls for tolerance. 

It calls for goodfellowship. 

It calls for companionableness. 

But it is worth infinitely more than it costs. 

It is an asset without which a man is likely to 
bankrupt his career. 

He who would take all and give none, he who can- 
not rise to the give-and-take level, can never hope 
to become a genuine teamworker. 

And only teamworkers rise to the top under 
modern conditions, where one-man enterprises can- 
not withstand the competition of giant combinations 
of brains and capital. 

Carefully scrutinize your make-up, and if there be 
weak spots or kinks in it, apply yourself to remedying 
them. 

For large scale success to-day is spelled "Team- 
work." 



86 



How You Can Become a Successful 
Teamworker 

Some men like to work with others, they like to 
hunt in pairs, they always want a partner; and other 
men like to go it alone. The first man usually has 
little originality, he never thinks things out on his 
own account; and the second man is likely to fail, 
because the very best ideas amount to nothing 
unless carried into effect, and in these days it takes 
an organization to carry business ideas to the point 
of big money making. However strong and original 
your ideas may be, youve got to have teamwork to 
back them up or you won't make any money worth 
speaking of out of them. 

How are you going to get teamwork? 

First, no very young man has any business to go 
it alone, at first at any rate. He needs the educa- 
tion and training that an organization can give him, 
and his wisest plan is to pick the organization that 
can give him the best training. What is [a dollar or 
two of salary as compared to this training in one's 
chosen line of business? 

Ask yourself, young man, have you gone out 
specifically to get the education which your organ- 
ization can give you? 

That is the attitude of the teamworker in its 
first phase. If you look on every other worker 
in your concern, from the office boy to the president, 
as your teacher, from whom you are trying to learn 
something, you have the right attitude for the 
teamworker. 

Are you doing it? 

The man of thirty or over, who has mastered his 

87 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

business and begins to feel lie can do things on his 
own account, has a different problem before him: 
shall he start a business of his own, go into a part- 
nership with some other young men like himself, or 
stick with the older and bigger corporation with 
which he has previously been connected? 

Is that your problem ? I'll give you the answer. 

The answer lies in yourself. Have you a con- 
viction that you have it within yourself to dominate 
that big corporation by the time you are fifty or 
sixty? If you have that conviction, stick with it to 
the end, no matter whether your immediate superiors 
are just now friendly to you or not your loyalty is 
to the corporation, to the business, and if that 
loyalty is unswerving the time will come when, the 
big men now at the top having dropped out, you 
will be chosen because the business will have to 
have you even if your predecessor hated you like 
poison. Your loyalty to the business will keep under 
any little personal feeling of antagonism, and your 
devotion to teamwork will win out over any pos- 
sible shade of personal favoritism. 

If, on the contrary you see a chance for a bigger 
and stronger business outside, because it is one with 
fresh blood all through it, and you can draw about 
you the right aides (just as a Prime Minister forms 
a Cabinet if he can get the right men to take port- 
folios), strike out for yourself. But don't do it 
unless you can command the right support, for if you 
don't have it you might as well throw up the sponge 
at the start. 

You may, however, be something of a professional 
man, an engineer, an expert, a thinker par excellence. 
Such men must handle their business almost entirely 
alone. But they won't succeed any more than the 

88 



TEAMWORK 

others without teamwork, only their teamwork 
must be of a different sort: they must use the big 
organizations of outsiders, and they must set their 
faces to get those organizations. The lawyer must 
have his big corporations as clients — and he must 
go after that kind of client; the doctor must have his 
hospitals where he does an enormous amount of 
work for nothing but where he gets his connection 
and his prestige; the engineer must have his con- 
struction companies, and the business efficiency 
expert must have his staff of friends among big 
business men who will support and recommend him, 
always in return for valuable personal services which 
he renders them for which he makes no charge. 

Write it down — just how are you systematically 
going after the co-operation without which you can't 
make a big success? 

The attitude of seeking and cultivating teamwork 
is teamwork. 



89 



POLITENESS 

Politeness is the hall-mark of the gentle-man and 
the gentle-woman. 

We all aspire to be considered well-bred. 

A lack of politeness stamps us as coarse, boorish, 
brutish, ill-bred. 

No characteristic will so help a youth to advance, 
whether in business or society, as politeness. 

Genuine politeness is not veneer, is not mere pre- 
tension, is not assumed, is not artificial. 

Polite acts spring from kindly thoughts. Po- 
liteness is only another name for thoughtfulness. 

"Politeness is to the mind what charm is to the 
face," was Voltaire's happy definition. 

Impoliteness is a species of selfishness, of putting 
self first, of trampling upon the feelings or the rights 
of others. Impoliteness is an ugly quality. 

Nor does it pay. It arouses the resentment in 
others. It creates antagonism. It repels friend- 
ship. It does not attract. 

"The spirit of politeness," to use the fitting 
language of La Bruyere, " consists in making others, 
through our words and manner, pleased with us and 
with themselves." And again, "A man's qualities 
must be very great indeed to be able to do without 
politeness." 

Employers to-day give preference to employees 
wno are polite, who know how to please, who know 
how to win goodwill, who attract rather than repel. 

90 



POLITENESS 

Competition is so keen to-day, there is so much 
standardized merchandise, there are so many places 
where one's wants can be supplied, that the suc- 
cess or failure of a business may depend on the ability 
of employees to please customers or clients. 

Courtesy — another name for politeness — costs 
nothing, but can gain much both for an individual 
and for an organization. 

The greatest industrial enterprise in the world, the 
United States Steel Corporation, is noted for the 
courtesy it consistently shows towards not only*its 
customers, but towards its competitors, while this 
same spirit of thoughtfulness and consideration is 
extended also to its quarter of a million workers. 

The next largest industrial employer in the coun- 
try, the American Telephone Company, will not 
retain a single employee who cannot learn to be 
polite. Persistent rudeness brings dismissal. 

The extreme unpopularity of the New York sub- 
way management is due in large measure to the rough, 
unmannerly, domineering character of the man- 
agement which has contaminated many of the 
employees who come into contact with the public. 

Theodore Roosevelt, privately, is one of the most 
polite and mannerly citizens in the United States, 
notwithstanding the pugilistic nature of many of 
his public utterances. 

Ex-President Taft is likewise the personification 
of politeness. 

So are some of our most successful men of affairs, 
such as Charles M. Schwab, J. Ogden Armour, 
George Eastman, John D. Rockefeller, E. H. Gary, 
Seward Prosser, Frank A. Vanderlip, James Speyer, 
Cyrus H. McCormick, H. P. Davison, Charles H. 
Sabin, H. C. Frick, James A. Farrell, Daniel Willard, 

91 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

Paul M. Warburg, John H. Patterson, Jacob H. 
Schiff. 

The rough-and-tumble of life has not crushed out 
courtesy and politeness from these giants. 

Politeness has been the passport to many a young 
man's success. A man recently died and was ac- 
corded columns and columns in the press, his funeral 
was attended by leaders in every walk of life, and 
President Wilson joined in sending condolences. 
This man was once a dishwasher in a restaurant 
but through an act of politeness he was enabled to 
become the most prominent hotelkeeper in America — 
George Boldt of the Waldorf-Astoria. 

Numberless financial and business leaders have 
chosen as private secretaries clerks who were dis- 
tinguished by their good manners, and private secre- 
taryships have very often proved stepping-stones to 
higher things. 

Universities in the olden days paid most attention 
to turning out gentle-men, men of polished man- 
ners, men taught to have regard for the feelings and 
the comfort of others. 

Our modern colleges pay too little attention to 
teaching this everyday, humble quality of politeness 
with the result that many youths emerge bumptious, 
arrogant, forward, conceited, and inconsiderate of 
others. 

The highest success in nearly every walk of Hie 
depends upon one's standing with others, upon the 
esteem in which one is held, upon the impression 
one's actions make upon others. 

No universally unpopular person could ever be- 
come President of the United States. Not only so, 
but great industrial corporations, large railroad 
systems, influential financial institutions and the 

92 



POLITENESS 

like will not to-day choose as president a man dis- 
liked by his fellows or by the public, no matter what 
his technical fitness may be. 

W. E. Corey was dropped from the presidency of 
the Steel Corporation solely because he aroused the 
ire of the public by his unhappy domestic escapade. 

The Vanderbilts no longer occupy a dominant 
place in either the railroad or the financial world, 
not so much because they lack ability, as because 
their uppishness and purse-pride brought them into 
general disfavor. 

Rudeness is not, as many misguided individuals 
seem to think, a mark of superiority. It is rather a 
sign of poor commonsense, of lack of thought, of 
failure to grasp the fundamental realities of life and 
of humanity. 

We talk of a person's "innate courtesy"; we some- 
times say that "politeness is inbred." 

But courtesy can be cultivated. 

Courtesy and politeness are the flower and fruit 
of right thinking, of regard for others, of humane im- 
pulses. 

Says the Bible: "The first shall be last and the 
last shall be first." That is a warning against im- 
politeness, against the undue thrusting of one's self 
forward, against bumptiousness, against pushing 
others aside in order that we may get ahead of them, 
against, in short, bad manners. 

Nothing is more winsome in a child than polite- 
ness, and nothing more repellent than cheekiness. 

In adults we are coming to attach more and more 
importance to this same quality of politeness, for as 
civilization advances, boorishness becomes more and 
more taboo. 

Said one of the most prominent German-Ameri- 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

cans in this country on returning from a visit to the 
Fatherland just before the war began: "I was 
pained to find the superior airs put on by the wealthy 
people over there. Their manners were positively 
objectionable. They were so blustering and proud 
and domineering that I told some of them that I 
feared the Germans were riding for a fall — they were 
living examples of the pride that goeth before a 
fall." His words proved tragically prophetic. 

The execration, the hate, the loathing in which 
Germany is held to-day is due in no small measure to 
the utter lack of courtesy and politeness they have 
manifested throughout the war. They have acted 
more like fiends than Christians. It is their 
savagery, their barbarity, their cruelty which will 
keep them outside the pale of civilized human society 
for many years to come. 

Politeness is a pleasing form of kindness — and 
nothing commends itself more than kindness. 

The impolite person is invariably grouchy, dis- 
contented, unhappy. 

Impoliteness and pessimism go hand in hand. 

Politeness and cheerfulness are twin brothers. 

Grouchiness and pessimism make for failure. , 

Politeness makes for success. 

Cultivate politeness. 



94 



How You Can Develop the Habit of Politeness 

Politeness is not a coat that can be put on and 
taken off at will, but an innate habit of mind, an 
attitude toward all other human beings which 
becomes instinctive. The cultivation and test of 
politeness, therefore, is best judged by the way 
you treat the poorest and meanest persons around 
you. 

Are you always considerate of the office-boy, or 
don't you think he counts? The elevator man? 
The old lady who comes into the store to buy 
ten cents' worth of darning cotton? The person 
whose politeness is shaky invariably thinks those 
humble subordinates do not count and speaks to 
them in a brusque, bossy way. Do you? You 
know. 

The American "Service" idea of business is 
nothing more than the perpetual feeling of subordina- 
tion and attentive kindness to all classes of customers, 
not merely to the big and important customers. 
The old-world idea of business was the aristocratic 
idea of toadying to the big customer and ignoring 
or slighting the humble customer. The democratic 
principle is treating all exactly alike at all times. 

Look at the enormous business of the five and ten 
cent stores! That shows what enough small cus- 
tomers will do for any business man. And you 
never can tell when a small customer will become 
a big customer. Politeness in business is, there- 
fore, a matter, not of treating the big customer 
well, but of treating the poorest and humblest 
customer JUST as well as the small customer. 

Do you treat your small customers on a real 

95 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

level of equality with your best customers? You 
know. Answer the question honestly. 

The office-boy, the stenographer, and the elevator- 
man, or the meanest little customer who comes into 
your store, these are the people on whom you can prac- 
tice politeness till you cultivate a real habit. They 
will not mind your awkwardness at first — in fact, 
they will appreciate anything you do for them. 

Resolve this day that you will make yourself 
tremendously popular with the poorest and mean- 
est employees about your place of business, and 
you will have taken the first step toward cultivating 
true politeness. It will carry over into all your 
business transactions and will actually pay bigger 
dividends than almost anything else you can do. 
It will be that intangible thing that will "make 
people FEEL like doing business with you," and 
people do business chiefly because they feel like it, 
not because of any logical reason. 

Do you feel that you like the people you deal with? 
If you don't like them very much you may be sure 
they don't like you very much. If you learn to 
like them more, if you try hard to like them, some 
intangible messenger will influence them and they 
will begin to try to like you. 

Will you do that to-day? And resolve to keep 
at it every day? 

Some people lack politeness because of absorption 
in their business, absent-mindedness, thoughtless- 
ness. They are really kind at heart, but they haven't 
been made to stop and think how necessary it is to 
show it. 

Are you of that kind? 

If you are, just stop and see if you haven't been 
overlooking something and if it won't pay you to 

96 



POLITENESS 

take some time to make an effort to show your good- 
will more clearly and habitually. 

Will you settle that point right now? 

But perhaps you are so busy you can't possibly 
take the time to be polite to everybody. Is that 
your case? Do you feel that is a good excuse for 
snubbing a good many people? 

Stop. If you haven't time to be polite yourself, 
hire somebody to be polite for you. Anybody so 
busy that he can't stop to be polite can certainly 
afford to hire a secretary who will make a business 
of being kind, considerate, and polite to everyone 
who comes to see his superior. 

Have you instructed your secretary carefully 
not to copy your manners but to be a great deal more 
polite to all the poor people who come to your office 
than you have time to be? 

If you haven't given such instructions, you are 
yourself deficient in politeness. 

This is a hard subject to be honest about. Have 
you been strictly honest with yourself in checking 
yourself up on it? 



97 



INITIATIVE 

"I spent fifteen million dollars experimenting 
with one process which had been turned down by 
every other steel company in the United States," 
Charles M. Schwab, creator of America's super- 
Krupps, once told me by way of illustrating the part 
which daring and initiative had played in his career. 

Initiative is in business what radium is among 
metals — the rarest and most valuable. 

America has been blessed beyond all other modern 
nations in industrial, in transportation and in manu- 
facturing initiative. 

What gave America a transportation system com- 
pared with which the systems of the rest of the world 
are miniature playthings? The initiative, the 
courage and the determination of such pioneers as 
Huntington, Hill, Cassatt, Harriman, not to omit 
McAdoo of Hudson Tunnel fame. 

What gave America world's mastery of the photo- 
graphic industry and of film manufacture? The 
initiative, mainly, of George Eastman, first in pro- 
ducing superior dry-plates, next in evolving un- 
equaled cameras, and lastly, in bringing about the 
first workable process for the making of films suitable 
for Edison's moving-picture invention. 

What has enabled America to supply the world 
with cash registers? The ceaseless initiative of 
John H. Patterson, later the "Savior of Dayton." 

What gave and gives America leadership in man- 

98 



INITIATIVE 

ufacturing typewriters for the civilized world? 
The initiative and enterprise of our Remingtons, 
our Underwoods, and other progressive men of 
business. 

What has knit the world together by telegraph 
and by telephone? The initiative of Morse and 
Field and Bell and Vail, American citizens all. 
' Is not the greatest lay-figure of the two hemi- 
spheres to-day our revered Edison, the personifica- 
tion of initiative? 

High-speed railway travel was made safe by 
another American only a little less entitled to fame, 
George Westinghouse, whose initiative blazed the 
trail in applying air to powerful brakes. 

Very silently progress is being made in rail- 
joining the two American continents through the 
initiative of a modest, retiring native of Brooklyn, 
Minor C. Keith, whose achievements will one day 
be more honored than they are by us, his contempo- 
raries. 

America, in the eyes of the world, typifies above 
all else this quality of initiative. 

America, indeed, owes its very birth to initiative, 
for if ever mortal man displayed initiative and re- 
fused to forswear it that mortal was Christopher 
Columbus. 

The greatest successes are nearly all the fruit of 
initiative. 

The opposite, the antithesis of initiative, is 
imitation — and in what derision and contempt are 
imitators held! "Copy Cats" they are sneeringly 
dubbed by the populace. 

Why do we hold in such high esteem the achieve- 
ments of the Wright brothers? Because they were 
illustrious examples of initiative and tenacity. 

99 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

Henry Ford's place and popularity are due in no 
small measure to his initiative in his chosen field. 

In this world war the cry has been, "Give us 
men of initiative!" Said a notable General con- 
fronting the German trenches on the Western 
front: "I don't know what Napoleon would have 
done to overcome trenches, but I know he would have 
discovered some means. 99 

Modern war is largely a contest of initiative, of 
inventing new weapons of destruction and of in- 
venting antidotes therefor. 

The world has imitators a-plenty. 

The demand is for initiators, not imitators — for 
leaders, not followers. 

"Where there is no vision, the people perish," 
says the Sacred Book. Christ Himself was the 
greatest exponent of initiative the earth has ever 
known. 

Ideas are the most valuable commodity in the 
world to-day. 

And ideas are born of initiative, the children of 
men and women of initiative. 

The concern headed by a man of initiative is 
always one jump ahead of its competitor headed by 
an imitator. 

Advancement is applied initiative. 

Most qualities can be acquired; some, it would 
almost appear, have to be born in a person. 

Initiative is one quality hard to develop unless the 
original brain-soil be favorable. 

Present-day conditions, however, have stirred 
initiative as never before. A thousand and one new 
problems in manufacturing, in transportation, in 
management are arising daily for solution. These 
problems cannot be overcome by the adoption of 

100 



INITIATIVE 

old rules, old formulas, old devices. They call for 
original thinking, for resourcefulness, for initiative. 

"My competitors are all wondering how I can 
get goods from the Orient to New York," said a live- 
wire young importer. "The railroad embargo and 
other obstacles have proved too much for them. Of 
course, I am not telling them how it's done." But 
he told me — and it was nothing but an example of 
brilliant initiative born of knowledge of every phase 
of his business. 

That's really the main secret of initiative — knowl- 
edge, mastery of your business, plus dogged deter- 
mination to ponder every difficulty until the brain 
evolves a remedy. 

Nations and corporations are to-day setting an 
unprecedented premium upon initiative, upon the 
power to originate new, workable devices or schemes, 
upon the power to readjust successfully the old order 
to the new, upon the power to evolve order out of the 
chaos caused by the world war. 

The occasion begets the man, 'tis said. This is 
the occasion par excellence for begetting initiative. 

But this quality, this power of initiative, will not 
descend from the clouds and alight upon individuals by 
chance : it will come and will function only where prepa- 
ration has been made to attract and to receive it. 

Expressed differently, initiative is not wholly a 
heaven-sent gift, but is largely the fruit of study, of 
the exercise of imagination, of a spirit of daring, of 
clear thinking — in short, of knowing how. 

The war is re-shuffling the whole deck of cards. 
Rather, it would be a better simile to say that the 
war is winnowing the human wheat from the human 
chaff in every land. Old reputations are tumbling 
daily and new reputations are arising. 

101 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

The supreme test in the higher reaches is: Has he 
initiative? Can he think up a better way to do it 
than it has ever been done before? Can he invent 
some new, effective method? Can he outthink the 
enemy — that is, competitors? 

General Goethals, builder of the Panama Canal 
and later appointed Quartermaster of America's 
entire army, a job bristling with novel problems 
which called for prompt solution, thus admonishes 
those who lack initiative: "When do you expect 
to do the wonderful things you are dreaming about? 
Why don't you begin? What are you waiting for? 
Where is your courage? Haven't you any dare in 
your nature? Why don't you start? Are you 
waiting for a good thing to come to you, waiting for 
influence, for pull, for someone to help you? My 
friend, you never will get anywhere unless you launch 
out, take chances, unless you are willing to run the 
risk of failure. If procrastination runs in your 
blood; if you have formed the habit of putting off, of 
deliberating, waiting for better conditions, you will 
never get anywhere in the world. The first thing is 
to begin. The world is full of people who are either 
failures or who are plodding along in mediocrity 
because they didn't care to begin, to launch out. 
Didn't dare to begin would make a fitting epitaph 
for millions of nobodies, millions of failures." 

Said the wise Elbert Hubbard: "The world 
bestows its big prizes, both in money and honors, for 
but one thing. And that is initiative." 

Immelman won imperishable glory as an aviator 
largely because he originated new tricks which con- 
founded his opponents of the air. 

Sir Eric Geddes, the man placed in charge of Brit- 
ain's whole navy, was little known before the war; 

102 



INITIATIVE 

but he had ideas and he insisted upon bringing them 
to the notice of the Government, and it finally gave 
him a subordinate post. He displayed such initia- 
tive that he rose step by step until he won the highest 
place in the greatest navy in the world. 

America has produced relatively few instances of 
obscure men rising to dazzling heights at Washington 
since we entered the war, but this is at least partly 
due to the bureaucratic methods, the red-tapeism, 
the wooden officialdom which have prevailed. Even 
so, tasks of no mean order have been accomplished 
by business men — and more will follow now that 
organizers are being given a free hand. 

Promotions never have been so rapid either in 
military or business life as during the last year. The 
demand is for fellows who can think for themselves, 
who can grapple with new conditions, who can initiate 
new methods or processes, who can blaze new trails. 

Throw off the shackles of precedent; cast loose 
from the chains of custom. Say to yourself: 
"Everything is changing. How can I become a 
leader and a master of the new order, instead of 
letting the new order master me? " 

The rivers of business and of life are swiftly chang- 
ing their courses. Are you simply to float with them, 
to be stranded you know not where? 

Or are you to address yourself with all your might 
— first, to taking your bearings afresh, then striking 
out for some prized goal? 

Don't be a lazy floater. 

Be a strong swimmer. 

Don't be a follower. 

Be a leader. 

Don't imitate. 

Initiate. 

103 



How You Can Test Your Power of Initiative 

Initiative is probably worth more money to the 
man who has it backed up by other qualities than 
any other one factor. The first man in the field 
skims the cream, and the second man who copies 
him and plays second fiddle must be content to 
grub for just a fair margin of profit. Occasionally 
the second man takes the initiative away from the 
first, but that is because in reality he has more in- 
itiative in detail than the original inventor. The 
first man in the field ought to make a big fortune, 
and very often does. That is about the only way 
really big fortunes are legitimately made. 

Initiative is a compound of several qualities — 
primarily, judgment, ideals, and courage. If you 
haven't these three, you can't possibly have in- 
itiative. But if you do have them, initiative is 
something more — it is judgment and courage applied 
practically to the realization of a big or little ideal 
that is of some practical use to someone, and it 
never fails to support these with any other personal 
quality that may be required, such as persistence, 
enthusiasm, honesty, will-power, teamwork, or what- 
ever it may be. 

Initiative begins with little things, never with 
big. The initiative that leads to a fortune is in- 
variably but an accumulation of scores or hundreds 
of smaller independent original efforts. The new 
office-boy sees a chair out of place, a hat fallen on 
the floor, an inkwell that is empty, a pen that is 
broken: he immediately attends to the matter with- 
out being told, and his boss says "That boy has 
initiative." If he waits to be told, he lacks in- 

104 



INITIATIVE 

itiative. The stenographer who sees a word in a 
letter she is writing which does not make sense to 
her and has the good judgment and courage not to 
change it at a guess but to inquire whether it ought 
not to be changed before she writes it down has 
initiative; but the stenographer who writes the 
word down and then says, "I thought that's what 
you said," is lacking both judgment and self-re- 
liance or courage. If you are an employee, high 
or low, do you wait to be told, or do you proceed to 
do what you know ought to be done or to find out 
about it if you are in doubt? 

Initiative in business has a fund for experiments 
and is willing to lose a good deal of money and do 
a good deal of hard work which comes to nothing 
to find some way at last of serving customers more 
efficiently than any one else on earth can serve 
them. Initiative says, "I want a monopoly — 
I want to be first in my class, not the second — I 
want to have a pleasanter smile for my customers 
than any one else (without being sickishly sweet), 
I want to be a few hours ahead of every one else in 
deliveries, I want to have the cheapest goods in 
the market or I want to have the highest quality 
(Both the cheapest department store on State 
Street in Chicago and the store with the highest 
quality of goods even up to dinner plates at $100 
each make big money, but the store with the highest 
quality makes most). Go over your business detail 
by detail and see if you are first or second. If 
you find any point where you know you are inferior, 
strike out for yourself and see how you can beat 
every one else. You will have to think, you'll have 
to work, you'll have to stick to it — but in the end 
you will prove you have initiative. 

105 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

Write down these points one by one according 
to your best judgment. Then go out to realize 
your ideals with all the will-power you can muster. 

If this course is of any use to you, here is the 
chance to prove it — one little point at a time. 
Will you do it? 



106 



HONESTY 

Honesty is the cornerstone of character. 

If a man be not honest, he is nothing. 

Yet this homely virtue, as old as history, is being 
re-discovered and re-enthroned. 

Honesty used to be disregarded in business, in 
politics, in diplomacy. 

Twenty-five years ago corporations and their 
creators did things they would not dream of doing 
to-day, because our standards of honesty have 
risen. 

Political huggermuggering that was sanctioned 
a generation ago would not be tolerated now and 
would, if attempted, lead to defeat, disgrace and 
prison. 

Even diplomacy is now called upon to come into 
the open, to be honest, straightforward, ethical. 

Honesty no longer means simply keeping within 
the law, keeping out of jail, keeping out of trouble. 

To-day's standard of honesty is higher than 
that. 

The honest man or woman now seeks not merely 
to avoid criminal or illegal acts, but to be scrupu- 
lously fair, upright, fearless in both action and 
expression. 

Since starting this homily on a subject almost 
as ancient as the hills, I opened a book containing 
a definition of honesty, and found that honesty 
means more than can be expressed in two or three 

107 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

words. Here are the meanings it gives of "Honest" 
and "Honesty": 

"Honest. — Honorable, fair, straightforward, 
equitable, open, free from fraud, faithful to 
contract, according to agreement, just as 
represented. 

Upright, virtuous, conscientious, just, true, 
fair, reliable, trusty, trustworthy, observant 
of obligations, that stand by one's word, as 
good as one's word. 

Genuine, free from shams, thorough, faithful. 
Reputable, respectable, creditable, suitable, 
proper. 

Decent, chaste, virtuous. 
Sincere, candid, frank, unreserved, ingenuous. 
Honesty. — Integrity, probity, uprightness, fair- 
ness, justice, equity, trustiness, fidelity, faith- 
fulness, honor, freedom from fraud. 

Truthfulness, truth, veracity, observance of 
one's word. 

Genuineness, thoroughness. 
Honor, chastity, virtue. 
Sincerity, candor, frankness, ingenuousness, 
truth, truthfulness, openness, unreserve, plain 
dealing." 
Can you measure up to that full-length defi- 
nition of what honesty means? 

The other day I was in a great banking house. 
Visitor after visitor was told that a certain partner was 
not in. From where I sat I could see him at his desk. 

A boy who applied for a situation years ago had 
the duties enumerated to him by the employer. 
Among other things, he was told he would have to 
lie. "How much salary do you want?" finally 
asked the boss. 

108 



HONESTY 

"Ten thousand dollars a year," promptly replied 
the lad, rising. 

"What? What d'ye mean?" asked the astounded 
employer. 

"I mean that you couldn't pay me to become 
a liar for you," retorted the plucky boy as he shook 
the dust of the office from his feet. 

Happily, the demand for liars is falling off. 
Fewer employers are now dishonest — and the 
honest employer does not engage dishonest em- 
ployees. 

The best market to-day is for honest men. 

Dishonesty used to be recognized as a poor 
policy only in copybooks. To-day it is being 
recognized as a poor policy throughout the whole 
world of affairs. 

E. H. Gary aroused derision among some of the 
Steel Trust's old-school directors when he first let 
them understand that the whole business, in all its 
relations with the public, legislatures, labor, com- 
petitors and customers, would be conducted with 
scrupulous above boardness and honesty. And 
when he discovered that certain directors sneaked 
out of the board room to speculate in the corpora- 
tion's stocks as soon as the quarterly statement 
of earnings was handed them, Gary boldly changed 
the hour of the meeting to insure that the Stock 
Exchange would be closed before the figures were 
placed in the hands of the directors. In this way 
the newspapers and the public received the informa- 
tion many hours before it could be acted on in the 
stock market. 

That action called for a rare brand of honesty — 
for something more than honesty, indeed; it called 
for a high degree of courage. 

109 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

Honesty comes easy to those who — well, to those 
who are honest. 

Dishonesty most often springs from avarice and 
cowardice. 

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first 
we practice to deceive," is true. 

Inordinate greed usually begets some form of dis- 
honesty, and then dishonesty breeds cowardice, for 
"the guilty fleeth when no man pursueth." 

It is seldom hard to be brave when you have 
nothing to hide. 

You rarely have to lie when you have been scrupu- 
lously honest in the widest sense of the term. 

The person who can preserve unimpeachable 
honesty in every walk and phase of life will be 
immune from half the temptations and sins of life. 
The person who falls from honesty finds that one 
false step leads to another and then another. 

Napoleon's thefts of Europe's richest treasures 
of art brought him almost as much opprobrium as 
all his inhuman butcheries. 

The ire of the world has been aroused in these 
latter days by the rapacious looting perpetrated 
by the "flower" of Germany's military aristocrats. 

No name in American industry is more despised 
than that of Horace Havemeyer of Sugar Trust 
infamy. And, fittingly, his dishonesty led to an 
ignominious end — by his own hand, it was privately 
whispered. 

Looting of railroads, traction companies or in- 
dustrial corporations by financial freebooters is 
no longer in vogue. The Moores, the Reids, the 
Kyans, the Yoakums are not types held in high 
esteem under the present-day code of ethics. 

Having — either voluntarily or involuntarily, 

110 



HONESTY 

though mostly voluntarily — turned honest them- 
selves, powerful directorates now want nothing but 
honest executives and honest employees. 

Employers have learned that employees who 
will act dishonestly for them will, when opportunity 
arises, act dishonestly by them. The employee 
who will cheat a customer will as readily cheat a 
boss, for dishonesty and disloyalty go hand-in-hand. 

The young man who aspires to succeed must 
first recognize and realize that he must pursue a 
rigidly honest course, that he cannot do the right 
thing for an employer by doing the wrong thing for 
himself. 

It is not enough that he refrain from stealing, 
that he eschew cheating, that he does not "beat the 
clock." 

He must let it sink into his heart and soul that 
it is dishonest for him to so spend an evening that 
he is not capable next day of rendering the very best 
service that is in him. 

He must feel that, to be one hundred per cent, 
honest with his employer, he must utilize a reason- 
able portion of his own time to fit him to discharge 
his duties better day by day and month by month. 

He must imbibe the idea that he cannot do his 
best by his employer unless he does the best possible 
by himself — by self-education, by self-discipline, 
by taking rational recreation, by thinking stimulat- 
ing thoughts, by keeping his eye on the ball whether 
at work or at play. 

To mistreat oneself is dishonest both to self and 
to employer. 

Only you can tell whether you are in all things 
honest. 

Said the veteran E. P. Ripley, president and 

111 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

upbuilder of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe 
Railway, when I spoke to him on this subject: 

"While theoretically an employee is judged solely 
by his record when on duty and no systematic 
effort is made to keep tab on his habits when off 
duty, yet if he is given to late hours of dissipation 
his appearance and his work are apt to show it, 
and naturally the employee's chief will not feel 
inclined to promote a young man of bad habits." 

Yes, honesty means more than the dictionary or 
any book of synonyms expresses. 

What passed for honesty in the business world 
even a few years ago would not stand the test of 
to-day. Says A. C. Bedford, head of the Standard 
Oil Company: "Unless business is conducted in 
a fair and honorable manner it will close in the 
long run. I would urge a young man going into 
business to cultivate, first a fine sentiment of honor, 
that is, a principle of action in conformity with the 
highest standards of duty and obligation set by the 
social sentiment of any time and place. But 
remember that conditions change. Matters which 
were considered permissible twenty years ago would 
be condemned to-day. This is due to an advance- 
ment of the moral thought and a better general 
conception of the higher ideals. The Bible is the 
best possible guide for conduct." 

Christian Girl, asked the qualities he sought in 
choosing aides, replied: "I want honesty, enthusiasm 
and genuine intelligence." You will note that hon- 
esty was put first. 

"Absolute honesty and integrity'' Robert Dollar 
lays down as the foundation on which every genu- 
inely successful career must be built. 

Honesty now must be four-square. 

112 



HONESTY 

It must embrace activities of the mind as well as 
the hand. 

It must not merely measure up to the outward 
civil law, but to the inward moral law. 

"I don't want smart Alecks; I want only plain, 
hard-working honest fellows," Frank A. Vanderlip 
told me in describing the kind of men he picks 
to fill $25,000-a-year jobs. 

Smartness used to be at a premium and un- 
compromising honesty at a discount. 

To-day smartness is at a discount and honesty at 
a premium. 

To be able to sell your services at a premium you 
now must be first, last and all the time honest. 

No employer — nor any one else — has any regard 
in his inmost heart for the person who is dishonest. 

And, most important of all, the dishonest person, 
when indulging in reflection in the still, quiet hours 
of a wakeful night, has no regard for himself. 

Honesty pays dividends both in dollars and in 
peace of mind. 

Dishonesty is the very worst policy. 



IIS 



How You Can Develop Essential Business 
Honesty 

The attitude of service carries with it complete 
personal honesty, though we naturally think of 
service as applying to customers in our business, 
while we think of honesty as applying to our various 
personal relations, particularly towards the people 
from whom we buy and whom we must pay in money. 
For convenience we will treat this lesson as a ques- 
tion of your attitude as a customer, as a buyer, or as 
an employee of a business concern. 

We all of us assume various obligations. Some of 
these obligations we assume voluntarily and with 
full intention to pay value for what we receive. 
Other obligations we slip into weakly, we are over- 
persuaded, or we assume them without realizing 
just what they involve; or conditions change. It is a 
natural human tendency to want to escape paying 
the natural penalty for all our little mistakes and 
weaknesses, and that is where our honesty is tried. 
Very few embezzlers deliberately plan to take money 
from their employers. In order to become an em- 
bezzler a person has to get into difficulties of one 
sort or another through weakness. When he finds 
himself sewed up so tight on several different sides 
that he can't see any other way out, he takes money. 
The powder train was laid in the first weak indi- 
gencies, and a very great many of us are incipient 
embezzlers, we have allowed ourselves to slip a 
little here and a little there, feeling sure we shall 
never go over the line. Let us take stock of our- 
selves and see just where we do stand, just how hon- 
est we actually are. As a matter of fact, there are 

114 



HONESTY 

no degrees of personal integrity — we are either all 
sound or the rot that has started will soon eat us up. 

The great point about honesty is that it is a 
purely personal affair. Many people think that if 
nobody knows, and especially if nobody cares, 
there is no great harm in what we do. But we know, 
and when we begin to let ourselves waver we are 
gone, we have got tuberculosis of the soul and it 
will take heroic treatment to save ourselves. If 
that is your condition, the quicker you take this 
lesson to heart the better. 

Take a sheet of paper and write down truthful 
answers to these questions: 

Have you ever accepted presents of any sort from 
anybody who wanted to sell goods to your employer? 
If you have you are guilty of accepting bribes, no 
matter how many other people do it, no matter how 
openly it is done, no matter how harmless you per- 
suade yourself it is. 

Do you systematically delay paying your bills 
when you have the money, so as to have a little 
longer use of the money at the expense of the other 
fellow? Well-to-do people often do that, and they 
persuade themselves it is carelessness on their part 
and the neglect has come simply because they haven't 
time to bother; but just the same it takes that which 
belongs to someone else, and it is an honest duty to 
take the time to bother to pay one's bills as promptly 
as possible. 

If you are working on a salary and suddenly find 
yourself alone and entirely unwatched, and know 
that no one is going to check your work up, do you 
have a queer feeling of freedom, a feeling that you 
don't have to work and can knock off for a little 
smoke, or something of that sort? Any employee 

115 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

who does not have the same sense of responsibility 
to his work at all times is at least subject to tempta- 
tion to dishonesty and ought to take himself in hand 
without delay. 

These are merely suggestive questions. You must 
write up your own particular record in your own 
way. 



116 



HEALTH 

Good health is as necessary for the winning of the 
war as good guns, good shells, good airplanes. 

But we must have good health at home as well as 
in the trenches, for our second line of defense is the 
productivity of those who remain at home — yea, our 
first line of defense, on the battlefront, could not be 
maintained were this other line to give way. 

Poor health threatens to hasten the collapse of 
Germany and her vassal allies, for all reports record 
semi-starvation and rampant disease in Germany, 
Austria-Hungary, and Turkey. 

So far, the health of enemy armies has been main- 
tained — at the expense of the civilian populations; 
but there are multiplying symptoms that the health 
as well as the morale of the Teutonic soldiers is now 
giving way. A sick army cannot fight. 
' One of the finest tributes paid America is the uni- 
versal testimony that the physique and the health of 
our soldiers are superior to those of any other army in 
Europe. 

Wars are won, in the final analysis, by whichever 
side can longest maintain in the field an adequate, 
thoroughly-equipped army of able-bodied, healthy 
men. 

The health of our soldiers is being safeguarded 
as the health of no other army in history was ever 
safeguarded. 

But what of all those of us who stay behind? Do 

117 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

we realize the importance of maintaining our health 
and the sinfulness of contracting avoidable sick- 
ness? 

Now as never before one's health is not merely a 
personal matter. It is not merely a religious matter. 
It is not merely a duty to one's employer. It is not 
merely a duty to one's offspring. 

Our health is now of vital military concern. 

How? Why? 

First: Only healthy persons can produce the 
things necessary for the equipment and sustenance 
of our armed forces on the battlefields. 

Second: Every case of sickness at home absorbs 
the time and attention of doctors and nurses who are 
thereby prevented from devoting their services to 
military purposes. 

Ill-health saps the vitality alike of the individual 
and of the nation. 

Sound health is an essential asset when a nation 
is consecrating all its strength to a life-or-death 
struggle with an enemy of tremendous power. 

At one stage grave alarm was felt in Britain over 
the serious falling-off in the output of direly-needed 
war materials. Investigation revealed that abnor- 
mally long hours and seven-day working weeks were 
impairing the vitality, the efficiency, and the health 
of the nation's workers, and in order to reinvigorate 
the population shorter hours and less onerous work- 
ing conditions were decreed by the Government. 
Had the health of Britain been irreparably under- 
mined, the war might have been lost before ever 
America had struck a blow. 

The real wealth, as well as the real power, of a 
nation, in war or peace, consists less in its material 
possessions than in its population of healthy citi- 

118 



HEALTH 

zens — its sturdy manhood, its robust womanhood, 
its happy, healthy children. 

Only strong, healthy men, clear of eye, steady of 
nerve, can lie by the hour in trenches and pick off 
enemy soldiers with all the consummate skill of the 
trained sharpshooter. Only such physically fit men 
can man and aim giant guns with the most delicate 
precision, as called for by modern warfare con- 
ditions. Only such men can successfully meet 
trained enemies in flying machines, in tanks or in 
hand-to-hand encounters. 

Every sick soldier is a drain upon an army. Every 
sick civilian is a drain upon a country. 

The sick consume and do not produce. They 
consume not only food and medical supplies; but 
they consume the time and the services of physicians 
and nurses and servants. 

To become sick when ordinary prudence could have 
avoided it is, in this time of war, unpatriotic. It is 
a crime against the State. It helps the enemy. 

Seneca, one of the wisest of the ancients, aptly 
declared: "Men do not die; they kill themselves." 

The New York Bureau of Public Health recently 
exhorted: "Keep well; don't have to get well." 

Man consists of body and mind (or soul). The 
body is the instrument given us for carrying out the 
dictates, the mandates, the orders of the mind. 

But if our instruments are out of gear, if we have 
allowed them to fall into disrepair, they cannot ful- 
fil the commands of the mind. 

Says the poet: 

Nor love nor honor, wealth nor power 
Can give the heart a cheerful hour 
When health is lost. Be timely wise; 
With health all taste of pleasure flies. 

119 



KEYS TO SUCCESS M 

Health means efficiency. 

Sickness means inefficiency. 

Health means optimism, cheerfulness, happiness, 
the joy of living. 

Sickness means pessimism, depression, pain, 
grouchiness. 

Health begets courage and daring and achievement. 

Sickness begets nervousness and fear and failure. 

Health vitalizes and energizes. 

Sickness saps and debilitates. 

The person who is sick is too much engrossed in 
his or her own aches and ailments to think much or do 
much for others. 

What Gorgas did at Panama is ranked by many as 
more important for mankind than what Goethals 
did. Goethals demonstrated to the world that a 
canal could be built there; Gorgas demonstrated 
that science could make a fever-soaked, disease-rid- 
den country healthful and habitable. 

Without health neither nation nor individual can 
reach the highest heights. 

Health is our most-precious but least-cherished, 
most-abused possession. 

Probably three-fourths of all sickness is self- 
imposed, brought on by some form of unwise, indis- 
creet or thoughtless action of our own, aggravated in 
certain cases by inherited weaknesses due to the sins 
of our fathers "even to the third and fourth genera- 
tions." 

"To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals," exhorted 
Benjamin Franklin, and there is truth in his quip. 

Again to quote New York City's Health Depart- 
ment: "Public health is purchasable. Within nat- 
ural limitations, a community can determine its own 
death-rate." 

120 



HEALTH 

No subject of equal importance has been so shame- 
fully neglected in the past by nations, by corpora- 
tions, by individuals. 

Three million persons in the United States are 
seriously ill at all times, costing the country, it is 
computed, $6,000,000,000, or more than all the actual 
money — gold, silver and bills — in circulation! 

But a tocsin has been sounded. War has been 
declared against all the forces which bring on ill- 
health. The medical examination of the millions of 
men of draft age has opened the nation's eyes to 
the need for preventive measures throughout the 
whole land. 

The supreme value of sound health and strong 
physique has been driven home as never before. 

Health, we have all suddenly learned, is not merely 
the highest form of wealth the individual can possess, 
but is the basis of our power to resist foreign foes, the 
basis of our national security and safety, the basis of 
our place among the peoples of the earth. 

How many of us conserve our health with the 
same care that we conserve our capital? Yet what 
is the dissipation of money compared with the dissi- 
pation of our vitality, our health, our life? 

We insist upon keeping our automobile in proper 
working order. We see to it that our piano is kept 
in tune. We take pains to have a proper edge put 
upon our razor. 

Are we equally careful to see that our bodies are 
kept in proper working order, our health in perfect 
tune, our mentality keen as a razor edge? 

Yet the one great aim of every Government and 
every individual is or should be to attain what an 
early sage termed, "A sound mind in a sound body." 

Without a sound body there is little likelihood of 

121 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

preserving a sound mind, for we all know from stern 
experience that if we abuse our bodies, if we become, 
over-fatigued, if we feel out of sorts physically, our 
minds will not act with spontaneity, with vigor, with 
relish, but become lackadaisical, indifferent, lazy, 
inefficient. 

Just as the army is rejecting men who are not in 
prime health, so employers are now rejecting workers 
who are not physically fit. 

The practice of subjecting every applicant for 
work to a thorough medical examination is being 
adopted by large employers all over the country, and 
the results are so valuable that in time this custom 
will become universal. Annual or semi-annual 
physical examinations of all employees are also 
being instituted by progressive organizations, with 
excellent consequences morally as well as physically 
and financially. How can one best husband health? 

"Good morals mean good health," it has been 
well said. 

Here are ten simple "Health Commandments " : 

Good habits. 

Good food. 

Plenty of sleep. 

Fresh air — and breathe it deeply. 

Plenty of exercise. 

Lots of water — outside and in. 

Sensible clothing. 

Right thoughts. 

Work. 

Don't worry. 



And it is well to remember, as Herbert Spencer 
expressed it,*-that "To be a good animal is the first 
requisite to success in life." 

122 



How You May Develop Robust Health 

Of course some of us are born with a strong con- 
stitution and some with a weak vitality. It is too 
late to avoid that, but each of us can make the best 
of what he has, and there is no question in the 
world that the poorest wreck can, with skill and 
care, be made quite a respectable body. The 
great majority of us are in fairly good natural 
condition if we only make the most of what we have. 
Our trouble is the development of bad habits that 
we do not seem able to break, or bad conditions 
which we do not seem able to break away from. 

Do you really know — have you ever thought — ■ 
what the facts actually are about your physical 
condition? Most people never do think until 
some great illness compels them to take a personal 
inventory, and then it is often too late to make 
much out of the bodies that have long been sadly 
abused. Isn't it foolish for you to wait till that 
time comes? Won't you check up your physical 
condition now with me — or with the help of an 
expert medical man if you feel you need one? 

How are your muscles? Can you run a mile at 
a dog trot, and pull up your weight as you hook 
your fingers over the top of the door lintel, or lie 
flat on your back and sit up ten times in fairly quick 
succession? If you can, your muscles are in pretty 
good shape. If you cannot you need systematic 
muscular exercise, taking one set of muscles and 
going over your body. Fifteen minutes every 
morning, or an equivalent amount in the right sort 
of varied sport every week, will make you all right. 

How is your digestion? Free, healthy, and 

123 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

regular, weight normal and not going down? Or 
do you suffer from gas, constipation, loss of weight, 
or anything of that sort? Do you take digestion 
medicine? Any one who takes medicine is in a bad 
way. The one and only cure for digestive trouble, 
the complete and the surest cure, is proper food — 
simple, moderate in amount, with a good share of 
fruit and greenstuffs rich in vitamines, a good 
amount of roughage, such as bran and coarse cereals, 
and much less meat than most Americans eat, and 
much less sugar than most young people like. 

How are your lungs? Do you have colds in 
winter? It's your own fault if you have colds, and 
colds lead to pneumonia and tuberculosis, the two 
greatest scourges in America to-day. First see 
if your chest expansion is three or four inches as it 
ought to be. Then sleep out of doors, and sit during 
the day in your office in a regular current of air 
(you will doubtless have to learn to do this by de- 
grees, but you can do it with a little practice). 

How are your nerves? Do you sleep well? Do 
you worry? What you need is nerve rest, relaxa- 
tion, recreation, social pleasures — anything that 
will regularly and systematically let up the constant 
and steady tension of the nervous strain, with a 
normal amount of sleep (not too little or too much). 
You can get all of these if you make a business of 
going after them, and still not make any radical 
change in your mode of life. 

Many a person says he hasn't time for exercise 
(three hours a week of the right kind of exercise 
will keep him in good shape, and you mean to say 
one can't spend three hours a week?); he can't 
control his diet — he has to eat what the boarding- 
house furnishes (but that person hasn't initiative); 

124 



HEALTH 

he can't stand cold fresh air, and doesn't know how- 
to relax his nerves (though if he went out and dug 
a ditch till he sweated his nerves would be relaxed 
all right). Are you of that nambypamby kind? 
You won't admit it! Then it is up to you if you 
are weak under any one of those four great heads 
to reform to-day — this minute. 



125 



LANGUAGE 

Your tongue is your rudder. 

It steers your course through life. 

Your tongue is also the index to your mentality. 

It tells whether you are educated or uneducated, 
vulgar or refined, careful or careless, painstaking 
or slipshod. 

The Bible calls it an "unruly member," so hard 
is it to control. 

Yet without control of the tongue no one can 
hope to rise to permanent success. 

To gain mastery of the tongue and of speech is 
essential to growth and advancement. 

Learn when you open your mouth not to "put 
your foot in it." 

Put your whole self, your best self, in it. 

Our tongue is our daily and hourly advertisement. 

By our tongue we constantly proclaim what we 
are, what we have to offer. 

If we are loud and empty as a drum our tongue 
reveals the fact. 

If we are uncultured, inwardly uncouth, our 
speech betrays us. 

If we are mentally lazy, lackadaisical and untidy, 
lo! the "unruly member" proclaims so. 

On the other hand, if we are keen, alert, precise; 
if our heads are stocked with knowledge and our 
minds are fountains of wisdom, our speech will prove 
a faithful interpreter. 

126 



LANGUAGE 

The art of conversation is the most important 
and most neglected of all arts. 

It is also allied with the art of written expression. 

And these two arts — speaking and writing — 
form a very large part of the whole of human activi- 
ties, business as well as social. 

Many a youth has won advancement because 
of his correct speech or his ability as a letter 
writer. 

Many a man and woman have risen in society 
because of the charm of their conversation. 

In public life the art of oratory is essential to the 
highest success. 

Why, therefore, is so little attention paid to culti- 
vating proper lingual habits? 

Chiefly because the importance of correct speaking 
is not generally recognized. 

A person will sit and chew the end of a pen for 
five minutes, thinking how to write a simple sentence; 
yet the same person will rattle off a dozen verbal 
sentences in thirty seconds. 

The explanation is that the importance of writing 
grammatically is understood, but the importance of 
speaking grammatically is not understood. 

Also many people are too lazy to take the trouble 
to form correct sentences when talking. They pour . 
out whatever words come rushing to the tip of the 
tongue, utterly regardless of the suitability of the 
words to express the meaning intended. 

Illiterate persons usually have a few stock phrases 
which they use over and over again no matter how 
inapt the phrases often may be. They simply 
can't be bothered trying to think which words 
ought to be used. 

But even educated persons, young and old, are 

127 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

often guilty of interlarding their speech with hack- 
neyed, inappropriate slang phrases. 

"Cheese it!" "You betcha!" "Believe me." 
"You said something." "I ain't." "Search me." 
"Ain't that the limit?" "Forget it." "You're 
dippy." "You're talking through your hat." 
' ' Listen ! " " Your trolley's twisted" — these are sam- 
ples of frequently-used expressions which one should 
avoid. 

Many persons adopt one or two superlative 
adjectives or exclamations and misuse them every 
hour of the day. Girls are more prone than boys 
to fall into this slovenly, senseless, unattractive 
habit. 

What is the basic reason for neglecting to cultivate 
correct speech? 

Laziness. 

Young people often think it is a sign of superior 
smartness to ejaculate slang every time they open 
their mouths. Others become users of slang chiefly 
because of thoughtlessness; they don't stop to con- 
sider the impression they thus make upon others. 

Grammatical expression and at least a moderately 
pleasing voice can be cultivated by any normal 
person — yes, the tone of the voice can be either 
rasping or pleasing, shrill or sweet. 

The importance of devoting care to one's speech 
was recognized at the dawn of civilization. 

"A wholesome tongue is a tree of life," says the 
Book of Wisdom. Also "Let your speech be always 
with grace," "The tongue of the wise is health," 
"Excellent speech become th not a fool," "Death 
and life are in the power of the tongue," "The 
tongue of the just is as choice silver." 

If excellent speechis not compatible with foolish- 

1£8 



LANGUAGE 

ness, so faulty speech and wisdom do not go well 
together. 

Since we all aspire — or ought to aspire — to be 
regarded as possessing a fair measure of sense, it 
is clearly our duty to acquire creditable speaking 
habits. 

No employer, other things being equal, would 
think of choosing a young man or woman flagrantly 
addicted to slang in preference to one whose choice 
of words reflected thought and care and whose voice 
was pitched in an agreeable key. 

I have often noted how scrupulously correct is 
the speech of notably successful financiers and cap- 
tains of industry, who never had even a primary 
school education. They wisely realized that if 
they were to mix with educated people and were 
to make a favorable impression they must not use 
the language of ignoramuses. 

I recall only two nationally known multi-million- 
aires whose "speech betrayeth them." One is a 
Southerner, who has never overcome a weakness for 
typical negro phrases and pronunciation; the other 
is a New York State ex-farmer boy, who had more 
schooling than most of our self-made business 
leaders. 

John D. Rockefeller picks his words as carefully 
as he formerly picked oil properties. 

Andrew Carnegie, although he had extremely 
little schooling when a boy, became a fairly good 
public speaker. He also wrote several books. 

William L. Douglas, the shoe manufacturer, never 
had even an elementary education, yet he became 
governor of Massachusetts. 

Captain Robert Dollar, the steamship and lum- 
ber leader, could not write when a youth, but he now 

129 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

speaks correctly and writes unusually well. His 
"Memoirs" are extremely interesting. 

Of all the business men I've ever talked with 
I like best, I think, to listen to Charles E. Mitchell, 
president of the National City Company of New 
York. Every sentence is direct, incisive, inspiring, 
full of "punch." He radiates enthusiasm. He 
arouses aggression. After talking with him you want 
to go out and tackle the hardest problem on your 
calendar. Mr. Mitchell happens to be highly edu- 
cated, but his vigor and energy of speech and action 
cannot be ascribed to this alone. 

The best way to become a good talker is to learn 
to have something to say. 

Sound thinking must precede sound talking. 

An empty mind yields empty talk. 

Studying how to talk well will, however, improve 
the mind, and once attention is concentrated on the 
subject of self -improvement, remarkable progress 
will become possible along various lines. Indeed, 
the person who directs diligent attention to improv- 
ing his or her speech will, almost unconsciously, 
gravitate into other valuable forms of self-improve- 
ment. 



130 



How to Develop Power of Language 

Command of language has several different sides 
which must be studied separately. 

Tone of voice and pronunciation; 

Choice of words; 

Knowledge of the technic of spelling, grammar, 
pronunciation, and the structure of sentences, para- 
graphs, and entire compositions. 

Have you a sweet, smooth voice? Just listen 
to yourself talk for a few minutes and see if your 
tones come "like music on the ear." Do they? 
Pick up a book and read a paragraph aloud. If your 
voice is high and rasping, it has been strained in 
school or at some time by effort to speak louder. 
Lower the voice until you can read the passage 
from your book in pure, smooth tones. Then 
strengthen the voice by practice on the vowels — 
a-a-a-a-a-a, ah-ah-ah-ah-ah, e-e-e-e-e-e, o-o-o-o-o-o. 
(I and U are compound sounds and are not used for 
such an exercise.) After a few minutes' practice 
daily, in a very short time you will get away from that 
high, rasping tone so many Americans suffer from. 

Is your pronunciation defective? You yourself 
can't possibly tell. You have heard your own 
voice so long you think it is all right. But go to 
some educated person who has a smooth, pleasant 
voice and get him to read a few words from a book 
while you repeat them after him, then a few more or 
a whole sentence, which you repeat, and so on. 
Study his pronunciation of each word and compare 
your own, or let him correct you. In this manner 
you will at least get a good enunciation, and there 
is probably no other way in which you can get it. 

131 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

Choice of words depends on having a good vocabu- 
lary, and on using that vocabulary in an effective 
way. The one good way to develop a vocabulary is 
by reading good books attentively, noticing the 
words and how they are used. What most people 
need is not so much more words, for if they used 
them others would not understand them, but more 
ways of using the words they have, by figures of 
speech, emphasis, suggestion, etc. The great mas- 
ters of literature, especially the novelists, have used 
these effective methods all through their books, and 
the best way to learn them is to read their books for 
an hour every day. Do you have that habit of 
reading? When you read do you notice how the 
writers express themselves? When it comes to 
using words in writing, by far the most important 
element is the use of the imagination to see the per- 
son to whom you are writing as if sitting in the chair 
beside your desk, so you can write as you would talk 
to him face to face. Ideal letter writing is careful 
conversation on paper, and it is impossible unless you 
can imagine your customer so that you can look 
right into his eyes and talk to him through your pen. 
The conversational style is by far the most acceptable 
style to-day in all writing and public speaking. 
Lawyers are no longer "orators"; they merely 
talk right to the jury in a commonsense, business 
fashion. Ministers talk to their congregations in- 
stead of lecturing them. Letter-writing is the 
simplest form of conversation on paper, and it must 
be careful conversation. Dictating letters is therefore 
one of the best possible methods of developing the 
power of careful conversation. Have you the imagina- 
tion that sees your man sitting opposite you as you 
write? Will you begin to cultivate that habit to-day? 

132 



LANGUAGE 

Mastery of the technic of spelling, grammar, and 
punctuation is the chief sign of an educated man; in 
probably ninety-nine cases out of a hundred a man's 
actual education is judged by these. Your trouble 
is that you don't know how much or how little you 
know. The first thing you need to do is to test 
yourself to see whether you are on the level of the 
grammar school graduate, the high school graduate, 
'the experienced stenographer, or the college gradu- 
ate (maximum). Would you write "all right" or 
"alright" (the second is always absolutely wrong); 
"between you and me", or "between you and I" 
(the second is wrong), "each of those boys and girls 
are working hard", or "each of those boys and girls 
is working hard" (the first is wrong)? Would you 
put a comma before "who" in the following: "The 
man who gave me this book is named Jackson" ? 
(No comma should be used.) " That big man who is 
standing just on top of the upper step is the president of 
the bank"? (There should be a comma before 
"who" and after "step".) These are five simple 
cases. If you feel in your own mind that you are 
instantly sure of the right form, you may suppose you 
are pretty good on the technic of language. If you 
are doubtful on all, you may be sure you are very 
deficient. If you are sure of two or three, but not of 
the rest, you need to take a training course. You 
can now get an excellent course in elementary Eng- 
lish by correspondence (self -correcting) . Few people 
who set out to study language really start at the 
bottom, where they ought to start. 



ENTHUSIASM 

Dirty ore wrought in white-heat enthusiasm can 
be transformed into shining steel. 

Enthusiasm is the electric current which keeps the 
engine of life going at top speed. 

The dull, indifferent mind never evolved a brilliant 
product. 

Half-heartedness never attained whole success. 

Enthusiasm is the very propeller of progress. 

All great achievements have sprung from the 
fount of enthusiasm. 

Mediocrity is the fruit of indifference. 

Masterpieces spring from minds on fire. 

"No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en," 
wrote the all-wise Shakespeare. 

Enthusiasm is the parent of enterprise. 

Search and you will find that at the base and 
birth of every great business organization was an 
enthusiast, a man consumed with earnestness of 
purpose, with confidence in his powers, with faith 
in the worthwhileness of his endeavors. 

Standard Oil, the greatest^industrial organization 
ever evolved by the mind of man, is the product of 
enthusiasm, of John D. Rockefeller. 

The only * * Tob acco King ' ' the world has ever known, 
James B. Duke, said to himself when an impecunious, 
unknown youth : " What Rockefeller has done in oil, I 
will do in tobacco." And enthusiasm was the motive 
power that propelled him on towards success. 

134 



ENTHUSIASM 

Henry Ford was and is the quintessence of en- 
thusiasm — as all the world now knows. In the 
days of his difficulties and disappointments and 
discouragements, when he was wrestling with his 
balky motor engine — and wrestling likewise with 
poverty — only his inexhaustible enthusiasm saved 
him from defeat. 

Such was the irresistible enthusiasm of Edward 
H. Harriman that he once declared: "All the op- 
portunity I want is to be one of fifteen men round 
a directors' table. I can do the rest." He told a 
Government prosecutor during a famous investiga- 
tion: "I would buy up every railroad in the country 
if you would let me." In twelve years he rose from 
obscurity to the most powerful railroad throne in 
the world — and, incidentally, made almost a million 
dollars a month during the last ten years of his life. 

John Hays Hammond, the great mining engineer, 
told me: "I would sooner cross a desert or climb a 
mountain to see a new mine than cross the street 
to see a new play or a new opera any day or night." 

It was Roosevelt, you will recall, who, when asked 
while he was in the White House how he contrived 
to get through so much work, replied: "I like my 
job." 

What has brought "Billy" Sunday his inordinate 
fame as a preacher? 

What carried Peary to the North Pole? 

What sustains Edison during his herculean day- 
and-night labors? 

Are they not all radiant examples of enthusiasm? 

The Greeks described enthusiasm as a God within 
us. 

Does not history show that, given enthusiasm, 
tasks apparently superhuman can be accomplished? 

135 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

Enthusiasm is as a dynamo generating power 
within us. 

The enthusiast pushes ahead, needing no "pull." 
The sluggard lags behind. 

Just as surely as indifference and ignorance spell 
Failure, enthusiasm and enlightenment spell Success. 

Why do such progressive and aggressive concerns 
as the National Cash Register Co., the Ingersoll 
Watch Co., the Simmons Hardware Co., at great 
cost hold salesmen's conventions? Chiefly to arouse 
enthusiasm, to inspire redoubled effort, to kindle 
fresh ambition. 

Employers to-day will not engage for any im- 
portant post men lacking in enthusiasm. 

To be able to muster up enthusiasm you must 
believe in what you are doing, believe in its legitimacy, 
believe in its efficacy, believe in its benefit to so- 
ciety. 

George W. Perkins at first turned down J. P. 
Morgan's offer of a partnership because, as he told 
me, "I believe in the worth whileness of life in- 
surance and was more enthusiastic about it than I 
was about mere moneymaking." And when, a 
year later, he did finally enter Morgan's firm it was 
only on the condition that he be allowed to continue 
his insurance activities. 

A little-known Sculptor once said to me: "I 
would rather create something beautiful than receive 
a million dollars." He scarcely knew where his 
next month's rent was coming from — but one of his 
works has since received the highest honor within 
the gift of the French Government and will be given 
a place in the Louvre for all time. 

Enthusiasm quickens, illumines, enures. 

It can salt and season even unpalatable work. 

136 



ENTHUSIASM 

The man who loses his enthusiasm gives up the 
race. 

The Elixir of Life is three parts enthusiasm. 

Enthusiasm stirs the pulse, brightens the eye 
and quickens the step. 

Indifference is twin brother of laziness. 

And the Door of Success is too high up, too hard 
for the lazy to reach and open. 

Only the enthusiast can hope to forge the right 
key and find the right combination to its lock. 



137 



How You Can Develop Enthusiasm 

Enthusiasm is the corner stone of business, particu- 
larly salesmanship and sales letter or advertisement 
writing. A sixteen-year-old boy walked into the 
office of the A. W. Shaw Co. some years ago and 
wanted a job as correspondent. He was put on at 
twelve dollars a week. This boy had left school 
at fourteen and had no education — something us- 
ually very necessary for a correspondent. But he 
did have a bubbling enthusiasm, and very soon that 
enthusiasm in his letters began to pull orders in 
remarkable quantity. When people read his letters 
they felt the contagion of enthusiasm so that they 
wanted to do something, and what could they do so 
easily as sign an order blank and send it in? Three 
years later that boy's salary had been advanced to 
$2,500, and when he threatened to leave to accept 
a better offer Mr. Shaw promised him a commission 
of two per cent, on the gross business brought in by 
his letters. That year the business amounted to 
just under four hundred thousand dollars and his 
commissions were of course eight thousand. That 
is what his enthusiasm earned him, and now he is 
said to be earning $25,000 a year as sales manager 
for the Royal Tailors. 

How can you develop enthusiasm? 

The first thing is to convince yourself that you have 
something worth being enthusiastic about. If you are 
in a business you don't believe in, you are a fool to 
stay. Get into a business you can believe in up to 
the hilt. Then SEE the immense importance of the 
service you can render to the public. 

The next step is to get rid of any tendency of 

138 



ENTHUSIASM 

overmodesty or personal timidity. Some people 
feel as if it is egotistic to be enthusiastic about their 
own powers or their own goods or their own services — 
that good goods or good services ought to sell them- 
selves. But they don't. In America people are 
judged quite largely by what they think and say 
about themselves, and even these statements are 
discounted a little. Consider that the mental hide 
of the public is a trifle thick, and if you have goods 
or services they ought to want you are doing them 
a favor to tickle their tough hide so that they will 
not miss their chance of benefiting by what you can 
give them. The fact is, most big business men have 
had to develop enthusiasm in business by special 
effort — they have had to "pump up" enthusiasm. 

There is no better way of working up enthusiasm 
than by writing out what you have to say, whether 
you are writing sales letters, or preparing a sales 
talk, or even getting ready to make application 
for an important position. 

What have you that you have a right to be en- 
thusiastic about? Sit down and with pen in hand 
write out your arguments and proofs, and do your 
level best to pump enthusiasm into your choice of 
words, your tone, your whole manner. 

Then go carefully over your work to see if it is 
only "hot air." "Hot air" is not real enthusiasm — 
it is the imitation of enthusiasm. You can be en- 
thusiastic only about real things, about things that 
deserve your enthusiasm. 

Try once more, put a reality of conviction into 
your words, speak them over to yourself in a tone 
of conviction as well as of enthusiasm. Daily 
practice of this sort will undoubtedly develop your 
power of enthusiasm in an astonishing way. 

139 



GOODWILL 

Goodwill is an important asset for individual or 
corporation. 

In the balance-sheet of some companies the value 
of "goodwill" is put at millions of dollars — the F. W. 
Wool worth Co. appraise this item at $50,000,000. 

Makers of many articles — collars, for example — 
rate their goodwill as worth more than their entire 
plants. 

Goodwill, in a business sense, really means repu- 
tation. 

Goodwill of the right kind, the lasting kind, can- 
not be won simply by advertising, not even by 
the spending of millions of dollars in proclaiming the 
merits of an article or a company. 

Goodwill has to be earned by merit, by genuine, 
honest worth, by giving full value. 

A concern which loses the goodwill of its customers 
is doomed. 

Goodwill, once lost, can seldom be regained no 
matter what efforts may be exerted, for, as the 
adage has it, " Give a dog a bad name and it sticks." 

Goodwill is a more precious asset for the individual 
than for the corporation. 

There are two species of goodwill, the goodwill 
within our own hearts, the goodwill that we feel 
towards others and extend to others, and, on the 
other hand, the goodwill others feel for us. 

To gain goodwill, we must exude goodwill. 

140 



GOODWILL 

We must sow goodwill before we can permanently 
reap goodwill. 

If we harbor hate, if we harbor uncharitableness, if 
we harbor distrust, we inspire in others similar senti- 
ments towards us. 

The world has been likened to a mirror; it has been 
likened to an echo; it has been likened to a bank. 
The world is largely a reflection of our own selves; it 
gives back the sounds we put into it; it repays, 
with interest, what we deposit in it. 

In other words, we make our own world, we make 
our own heaven or our own hell. We make the 
bed on which we must lie. 

Goodwill might truly be described as the source of 
all happiness. 

Did not Christ Himself declare that His Mission 
was to bring "Peace on earth, goodwill toward men"? 

Without "goodwill toward men" we cannot truly 
enjoy life. 

Unless those about us have goodwill toward us we 
cannot feel entirely satisfied, we do not have complete 
contentment of mind. 

Many powerful men, many men of inordinate 
wealth, many men who have won place and power 
and riches by means and methods which have stirred 
up the ill-will of their fellow-beings, have affected 
indifference to their standing with their fellow-men. 

"I don't care a snap of my fingers what the public 
think or say," one of America's foremost financiers 
once told me. 

The original J. P. Morgan used to put on a similar 
front. George F. Baker does so to this day. 

Yet Mr. Morgan was in reality extremely sen- 
sitive to the public's criticisms, and nothing gave 
him more satisfaction in the closing days of his life 

141 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

than the favorable impression his appearance before 
the Money Trust Investigating Committee at Wash- 
ington created. Mr. Baker, too, although he did 
not make as great a hit as his old-time associate, was 
also deeply gratified over the friendly comments 
made^by newspapers and the public when he gave his 
testimony. And I know that the financier I have 
quoted would have given several million dollars to 
win the approval and the goodwill of the people. 

Money, or even power, can never yield happiness 
unless it be accompanied by the goodwill of others. 

President Vanderlip of the National City Bank of 
New York will not engage for any executive position 
any man who has not a wide circle of friends who 
think highly of him. Incidentally the greatest 
thing Mr. Vanderlip has done for the City Bank has 
been to dissipate the unfriendliness with which that 
institution used to be regarded by a majority of the 
public and the press, who seldom missed an oppor- 
tunity to refer to the bank as "The tail of the Stan- 
dard Oil dog," or something like that. 

And just because we thus give out goodwill we 
attract goodwill. It is this whole feeling which 
makes Christmas the happiest period of the whole 
year. 

Like mercy, goodwill blesses both those who give 
and those who receive it. 

It is a virtue worth cultivating and practicing, not 
merely at Christmas, but from January to December. 

It will help us to be successful in business; it will 
help us to be successful socially; it will help us to be 
successful in our own eyes and in our own conscience. 

No treaties man can make will ever maintain a 
lasting peace unless the pens which write them have 
been dipped in goodwill. 

142 



GOODWILL 

The brotherhood of man, that consummation 
towards which mankind aspires/ will come only when 
goodwill has superseded ill-will throughout the world, 
for the spirit of brotherhood is none else than the 
spirit of "goodwill toward men." 

Goodwill, in short, is the key that can open not 
only the doors of success, but the doors of Heaven 
itself. 

I know a very clever business man who is making a 
great deal of money, mostly by practices which are 
strictly legal but which have as their object the out- 
witting and the outbargaining, not to say the hood- 
winking, of others. He is less happy than almost 
any one else I know. 

What makes the Christmas season full of joy? 
What "makes everyone so pleasant and charitable 
and considerate at this season of the year? 

Goodwill. 

We radiate goodwill at Christmas. We want to 
show little kindnesses for others. We think less 
about making ourselves happy than making others 
happy, particularly the little folks. W 7 e feel un- 
selfish. We are thoughtful. We come nearer obey- 
ing the commandment: "Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bor as thyself." 



143 



How You Can Build up Goodwill 

You may think that "goodwill" is one of your 
assets which is in the mind of the other fellow, and 
that, if you get it, it is by good fortune and not be- 
cause of your own personal qualities, other than 
sincere attention to business and honest service. 

Goodwill is built primarily on honest service; 
it is the natural reciprocal of unstinted and unselfish 
service on your part. But it is also something 
more than that — it is often an unreasoning pre- 
judice in your favor. Many very worthy and 
deserving people have failed to build up goodwill 
among their customers. 

It is also the result, you will then say, of a pleasing 
personality — a popular personality. That, also, 
is true — very true, indeed. But there is still some- 
thing more. It is the deliberate cultivation of good- 
will by playing up to people's prejudices, their 
natural likes and dislikes. 

"But why should I play up to people's pre- 
judices?" you ask. "Isn't that an unworthy 
thing to do?" 

I do not think so. What you call people's pre- 
judices are really prejudices chiefly in your mind. 

To you they are prejudices, but to them they are 
reasonable likes and dislikes. You do not under- 
stand why they should have these likes and dislikes, 
and so you call them prejudices. They may be 
very reasonable after all, and since people have 
them, and since you want their goodwill, you will 
simply have to play up to them or you will not get 
the goodwill. 

Goodwill as a special asset is largely a matter 

144 



GOODWILL 

of doing things in the particular way people like. 
Sometimes they like very bad ways of doing things, 
and your chief stock in trade may be a better way 
of doing the same thing. Then, of course, it is 
your business to fight for your own way in the faith 
that sometimes people will see the reasonableness 
of your method and come over to your side. Then 
you will find a very, very strong prejudice for you 
instead of against you. But in hundreds of little 
things in your business there is no very good reason 
at all why you should do this or do that, and if you 
will favor the habits and likes of your customers 
whenever you can you will be building up that 
immensely valuable asset, goodwill in business. 
Do people like^to think they are getting a bargain? 
Humor them. Do people like to have free delivery? 
Charge a little more and give it to them. Do people 
like certain colors, for example, red in bookbinding? 
Give it to them. 

Sit down and with pencil in hand make a list 
of all the little things in your business on which 
people have prejudices which you know about, 
or can find out about, and consider whether you 
are humoring those prejudices of theirs, or rather 
are sticking tooth and nail to some prejudices of 
your own. A carefully written out list of these 
little things may surprise you. If you are too 
prejudiced to make it, get some other person to make 
the list for you. It will be one of the biggest cash 
investments you ever made. 



145 



WILL-POWER 

To will is to win. 

But just as aspiration is useless without per- 
spiration, so it is useless to will and not work. 

Every great achievement is the fruition of will- 
power. 

Will-power is winning-power. 

The French version of our adage, "Where there's 
a will there's a way," is extremely expressive, Vouloir 
c'est pouvoir, meaning, to will is to can, to be able to. 

Our will is the mainspring of all our actions. 
Everything — every act and word and wish — must 
first originate in our will. 

Unless our will is strong our record will be weak. 

Unless we get our will right, unless we get it 
functioning properly, we cannot rise to the fullest 
measure of our opportunities, we cannot do justice 
to ourselves. 

To will is not merely to wish. It implies some- 
thing more. It implies determination, it implies 
dogged perseverance, it implies confidence, it implies 
courage, it implies stick-to-itiveness. 

The Kaiser has repeatedly proclaimed Germany's 
"will to victory," proclaiming this as the Father- 
land's greatest asset — and assuredly had not the 
Teutonic peoples possessed this "will to victory" 
they would have given up the struggle ere now. 

A weak-minded nation or individual is doomed 
to failure. 

146 



WILL-POWER 

Britain's sobriquet, "the bull dog," springs from 
her supremely strong will, her tenacity, her never- 
gi ve-upness. 

Napoleon possessed will-power beyond any man in 
modern history. 

The most notable figure on the world's stage 
to-day has been called the most self-willed and the 
strongest-willed man in America. President Wilson 
admittedly has "a will of his own." 

To be weak-willed is to be weak-kneed. 

The man without a will is likewise without back- 
bone. 

Will-power is synonymous with driving-power, 
with forcefulness, with aggressiveness. 

E. H. Gary had to exercise uncompromising 
will-power in order to overcome all the early attempts 
that were made to have him run the Steel Corpora- 
tion on different lines. On one occasion he told 
certain powerful directors: "Gentlemen, if you want 
things done that way, you will have to find someone 
else to do them." He stuck to his guns — and won 
out, fortunately for the peaceful progress of this Re- 
public. 

When President Wilson asked Charles M. Schwab 
to become head of all Government shipbuilding the 
latter refused to accept unless he were given a 
definite pledge that he could have his own way. 
Schwab has his own way of doing things and his will 
must be supreme if he is to be held responsible for 
results. 

Every young man ambitious to succeed must 
first cultivate will-power, for without will-power 
he will never triumph over all the obstacles and 
difficulties he is sure to encounter in the pursuit of 
his goal. 

147 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

The will to succeed must be there from the very 
first step. 

Whatever may befall, the will must never be 
vanquished. The world may beat and break and 
storm against him and may defeat his plans; 
but it must never be allowed to defeat or crush his 
will. 

"All things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, 
believing, ye shall receive." And again, "If ye have 
faith . . . nothing shall be impossible unto you." 

That is how God's Word expresses the unconquer- 
able strength of will-power. 

Have will-power, have faith that cannot be shaken, 
have determination that cannot be balked. 

Never give up the will to attain your fixed end, 
and in time you will reap the victory you deserve — 
probably much more. 

The world can never crush or destroy your will. 
You may not always be able to master circumstances, 
but you alone are master of your own will. 

Will is to man what gasoline is to a motor. It 
is the motive-power without which no wheel can be 
turned, no goal can be reached. 

Obviously, therefore, nothing calls for more care- 
ful nurturing than will-power. 

It is not enough simply to have a strong will — a 
fool, even a mule, can be self-willed and pigheaded 
in the extreme. 

The first cardinal care must be to cultivate the 
right kind of will-power and to point it in the right 
direction. 

It is not sufficient to say, "I have faith enough 
to move mountains" — and then do no spade-work to 
move the mountains. 

Our willing, we must early realize, must lie along 

148 



WILL-POWER 

paths we are prepared to plod no matter how many 
deep pits or high hurdles we encounter. 

It were the essence of foolishness to wish or will 
to become a great painter and never take a brush 
in hand, never study the principles or the technique 
of the art. 

Reason — sense — must form the foundation of 
our will, our wishes, our aspirations, our ambitions. 

Having carefully, prayerfully chosen your star, 
then resolve to let nothing under heaven deter you 
from pressing on towards it. 

Will and work. 

Stick. Be no weathercock, blown now one way, 
now another by every passing squall. 

"Readiness to will," the Bible well says, must be 
followed by "performance also." 

And it is here the need for will-power will arise. 

The launching of a ship is a joyous occasion, but 
no vessel can hope to sail the seas without meeting 
storms, without being buffeted by cruel waves, with- 
out encountering adverse winds and tides. 

Oftentimes there will be temptation to give up. 
Brain and hand and back and feet will become tired 
and racked and numb. Friends will fail. Others 
in the race will impede and hurt and discourage. 
Things will all go awry. Yea, at times the very 
stars in their courses will seem to fight against us. 

But one thing can save us — will-power. 

Man and the world may thwart the body, but 
nothing, save ourselves, can slay our soul, our will, 
the infinite, intangible, all-powerful subtle "some- 
thing" which alone distinguishes man from the brute 
creation and enables him to exercise dominion over 
all other living creatures. 

Nil desperandum ! Never say die ! 

149 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

If conscious that you're right, if conscious that 
you seek a worthy aim, if conscious that you deserve 
to succeed and that the world will be the better, 
in large or small way, for your success, your will- 
power can overcome, can never be conquered. 

It is your one possession beyond reach of your 
rivals, competitors, enemies, beyond reach of mater- 
ial circumstance. 

A soldier may die in battle; but who shall say, if 
he has fought a noble fight, that he has suffered 
defeat? 

Too much has been said and written, I am coming 
to believe, about the difficulty and the rarity of suc- 
cess, and the commonness, the prevalence of failure. 

A wise Westerner, Ed. Howe, recently printed a 
little book entitled "Success Easier Than Failure." 
There is truth in that. 

All successful men are not millionaires. All mil- 
lionaires are not successes. 

The lowly nun toiling in the slums, the humble 
nurse in the poors' ward of a hospital, the unsung 
mother of an unskilled laborer's children — all may 
be as great successes as the "personages" adorning 
front pages and society pages of the daily news- 
papers. 

Some of the most worthy and successful men and 
women I know never once had their names in print, 
never once had been cited as examples of how to get 
on, never once have been regarded by the world as 
examples of success. 

Real success is akin to will-power in that it lies 
in the mind, the heart, the soul, a thing oftentimes 
invisible to the eye of others. 

Sir Walter Scott was never a greater success, never 
a greater man than when he was "broke," for then 

150 






WILL-POWER 

he applied every ounce of his talent, every hour of 
his time, every volt of his will-power to retrieving 
his fortune, towards paying his debts, to reinstating 
himself as a solvent member of the community. 
Never before had he willed or worked so. 

What sustained Robert Louis Stevenson through 
many bed-ridden years of sickness during which he 
gave to a grateful world words and works of cheer 
and happiness? 

And what enabled Fanny Crosby, the blind hymn- 
writer, to rise above her affliction and console many 
millions of souls with her songs of hope and inspi- 
ration? 

When General Foch found his armies at the Marne 
giving way at both ends and the middle, what did 
he do? He decided to attack! And he attacked so 
successfully that Paris and France were saved to 
civilization — and he won his Marshal's baton. 

Did that not call for the exercise of sublime will- 
power? 

Our future and our fate lie in our wills more than 
in our hands, for our hands are but the instruments 
of our wills. 

Let us first generate unconquerable will-power, let 
us first learn to put our bodies under command of 
our wills, and then though all hell rage against us — ■ 
which it won't — we can and will prove conquerors 
over the things that count most. 



151 



How to Develop Will-power 

The secret of closing a sale is will — making the cus- 
tomer will to act through the silent, steady pressure 
of the salesman's will. Like produces like. Nobody 
will do anything for you unless you will them to do 
it, except sometimes accidentally, and then you'll 
usually find it will count very little for you. 

"Wilfulness" is mere stiffness, refusal to yield, 
resistance to the other man's will. It is as far from 
will-power as the South pole is from the North. 
True will-power yields, yields, yields — but it always 
comes back like a rubber cord, it never breaks. In 
the yielding process one may find he is wrong and 
change his course of action. True will-power changes 
its course of action just as freely and just as often 
as reason dictates — but it never is forced to surrender. 
It is like the line of battle of an unbeaten army — it 
retires and retires, but it is never broken. 

Ask yourself this question — Does any one ever 
successfully bully you? Do you let fate or cir- 
cumstances bully you into vacillation and discourage- 
ment? If so, your will is weak. How shall you 
strengthen it? Why, just as you do every other 
mental power — by every day fixing your mind for a 
few minutes, several times, on your power to will. 

Why does that do any good? 

The explanation is simple. The mental effort of 
concentration sends the blood into that part of the 
brain in which will-power resides, and that part of 
your brain grows exactly the same as any muscle 
grows when you exercise it. You exercise a muscle 
a little every day — and the muscle develops just as 
surely as morning follows the night. Exercise a 

152 



WILL-POWER 

certain faculty of your mind by concentrating all 
your attention on it regularly and systematically 
day by day, and that will develop just the same as 
muscles. 

Will-power is the force that makes people do 
things. 

First, you use it to make yourself do what you 
ought to do. Do you carry out the personal mental 
exercises which this course directs you to? Ten 
to one you don't — you know you ought, you can't 
deny the advice is right, but you lack the will-power 
to do what you know you ought to do. If you want 
will-power your business is to start right here and 
begin to make yourself do some one of these exer- 
cises: not all, at least to start with, but just one. 
If you can do one of these exercises every day for a month 
you are all right — you'll soon be able to do a dozen 
every day, and reap the reward of big success. But if 
you never even begin to do any 

Next, in your relations with others inside your 
organization, do you always do what others tell you 
to do, or part of the time do you insist that they do 
what you show them they ought to do? No person 
in an organization can have his own way all the time 
— that isn't teamwork. But the person who lacks the 
initiative to see anything for himself that is better 
than others are doing, and quietly insists on the 
wisdom of that course till either he admits he him- 
self is wrong or the other fellow gives in, is lacking 
in will-power. Are you a leader or a follower? If 
you know you are a mere follower, don't strike out 
too boldly at first, but take just one little thing and 
stick to it to the end. 

Letters are usually written (at least many letters 
are written) to make people do things. Do you have 

153 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

the power of quiet insistence in letters til! you 
actually close your customer? If you don't, there 
is something the matter with your letterwriting. 
A long follow-up is a very different thing from taking 
a special customer you have started right and keep- 
ing steadily after him till you land him. The long 
follow-up is impersonal. The impact of will through 
letters is highly personal — it is following the train of 
the other man's psychology till his spirit yields. 
Are you putting that kind of force into your letters? 
If not, try it to-day. Will you? 



154 



SELF-RESPECT 

Why did America enter the war? 

To maintain its self-respect. 

This Republic, indeed, was born of self-respect. 
Its parents refused to barter or betray their self- 
respect. 

Under autocracy manly self-respect cannot live. 
"Subjects" become puppets. The strings are pulled 
by tyrants. Men under such rule are semislaves. 

A man may lose his earthly all, yet if he retain his 
self-respect he can still be rich in the things that 
count, the things that endure, the things worth 
while. 

He who loses his self-respect, though he may have 
millions, is poor indeed, a bankrupt, a failure. 

Self-respect is one of the basic ingredients that 
go to make success. 

If a man loses respect for himself he will sooner 
or later lose the respect of others. 

Self-respect is not pride. It is not haughtiness. 

It is that hard-to-define "something" which pre- 
vents one from stooping to meanness, pettiness, 
harshness, bossiness; which resents every form of 
unfairness; which rebels against injustice; which 
impels one to have scrupulous regard for the rights 
and feelings and susceptibilities of others. 

The self-respecting person cannot flout the self- 
respect of others, cannot do unto others what he 
would resent having done to himself, for he who 

155 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

wounds the self-respect of another thereby mars 
and scars his owns self-respect. 

But self-respect is not a quality apart. It is not 
a flower that can be cultivated in a garden overgrown 
with weeds. It is a virtue that can flourish only in 
company with other virtues. 

The man who cheats, the man whose business is 
not run honestly, the man whose daily object is to 
get the better of others, cannot retain the true brand 
of self-respect. He may strive to deceive others — 
he may even try to delude himself — that he is entitled 
to self-respect, and he may, and he probably will, 
demand that others, particularly his subordinates, 
show him scrupulous "respect," for those who pose 
are the greatest sticklers for insisting upon being 
shown deference. 

But at heart he will know, or at least suspect, that 
lie is bluffing, that he does not ring true, that he is 
not worthy of being shown the obsequiousness which 
he demands of those he can command. 

The truly great court no fawning, no unmanly 
toadying, no kowtowing. They want no one to 
lower his self-respect for their sake. 

To possess a full measure of self-respect a person 
must be on the level. And if one be on the level, 
if one is conscious of deserving respect, what a weapon 
of strength is thus placed in one's hand, what diffi- 
culties can not be faced, what obstacles can not be 
overcome — and what disappointments can not be 
bravely borne! 

Without self-respect there can be no genuine 
success. Success won at the cost of self-respect is 
not success — for what shall it profit a man if he gain 
the whole world and lose his own self-respect? 
. Happily, the game of business and the game of 

156 



SELF-RESPECT 

life are now coming to be played more and more 
honorably, more and more in conformity with the 
canons of self-respect. 

A youth can now enter business and preserve his 
soul clean. 

The salesman no longer need be a liar. The clerk 
behind the counter no longer need practise deception. 

The reporter no longer need be a conscienceless 
novelist. 

The baker no longer need be compelled to mix his 
bread with secret deleterious substances. 

Sand is no longer mixed with sugar. 

The writer of advertisements no longer need prac- 
tise the art of being picturesquely untruthful. 

Self-respecting employers seek self-respecting em- 
ployees. But the employee who wants to be shown 
respect must possess respect; he must deserve respect. 

Self-respect entails a few other "selfs" — self- 
discipline, self-control, self-immolation if need be, 
self-possession, self-denial, self-culture. 

The worst foe of self-respect, of course, is selfish- 
ness. 

Next, perhaps, is thriftlessness — which is, indeed, 
a species of selfishness springing from self-indulgence. 

Few things kill self-respect quicker than debts, 
particularly debts incurred for self-gratification, for 
luxuries, for ostentation, for things not imperatively 
needed. 

It is well-nigh impossible to dodge creditors at 
every street corner and still carry one's head with 
self-respecting dignity. 

Solvency is almost essential to self-respect. The 
person who pays his way can look every man square 
in the eyes, need slink away from no one, need lick 
no man's boots. 

157 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

The worker who has saved a comfortable nest-egg 
Is in a better position to maintain his manhood and 
his self-respect than the worker whose improvidence 
has reduced him to penury. The man with a savings- 
bank account can, if need be, walk out of his plant 
or factory or office rather than submit to impositions 
injurious to his conscience and his self-respect, where- 
as the worker wholly dependent upon his next week's 
pay-envelope would probably feel compelled to swal- 
low the indignities. 

If you would save your self-respect, save. 

Self-respect and vanity can seldom exist in the 
same person, for vanity usually leads to undue ex- 
penditures and indulgences, and these in turn lead 
to disaster. 

Ambition's worthy, but it must never be allowed 
to get beyond control or it is certain to play havoc 
in the end with self-respect. 

One must not stop at gaining the respect of others — 
that is comparatively easy. One must strive to 
gain and maintain the respect of oneself — which is 
very much harder. 

The public see only the walls of your temple; 
you see the inner shrine. Or, self is your aeroplane, 
which no hand but yours can pilot or stabilize. 

Of course, all this must not be interpreted as 
meaning that any one of us can aspire to perfection, 
for "a just man sinneth seven times a day." We 
can be sinners and yet retain our self-respect — Christ 
sacrificed Himself to attain that very end. 

Nor does self-respect mean that we must always 
wear clean collars and cuffs, that our shoes must 
never be dirty, that our faces must never be grimy, 
that we must live in fine houses and eat off spotless 
linen. 

158 



SELF-RESPECT 

James B. Duke did not sacrifice his self-respect 
when he lived in a hall bedroom in New York and 
ate in a Bowery lunchroom in order to invest every 
penny possible in his business. 

Frank W. Woolworth did not lose his self-respect 
when, as a youth, he slept every night in the dingy 
basement of a country-town store with a revolver 
at his elbow to ward off burglars. 

Darwin P. Kingsley did not lose his self-respect 
when, as a struggling student,he lived for weeks on 
little else than potatoes, and rang the college bell to 
pay his fees. 

Frank A. Vanderlip did not lose his self-respect 
when he lived for an entire college year on a total 
expenditure of $260. 

Thomas A. Edison, though he landed in New York 
without a penny and asked a tea-taster for enough 
tea to serve him as breakfast, did not lose his self- 
respect. 

William L. Douglas did not lose his self-respect 
when he trudged to and from the city with bundles 
of leather under his arm in the days when his dream 
of becoming the largest shoe-manufacturer in the 
world was still only a dream. 

Julius Rosenwald did not lose his self-respect by 
acting as a juvenile peddler before he embarked on 
his fairy-like business career. 

Thomas E. Wilson did not lose his self-respect 
by voluntarily doing the hardest and dirtiest of work 
in the Chicago stockyards as a foundation for his 
later rise. 

Irving T. Bush did not lose his self-respect by 
peddling stock in order to maintain the solvency of 
his unique enterprise, now without parallel either in 
this country or in Europe. 

159 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

Self-respect is made or marred less by what one 
does than by the spirit in which it is done. 

The scavenger can be more entitled to respect 
than the millionaire "clubman" who leads a para- 
sitical life of idleness. 

"The heart's aye, the part aye, that makes us 
richt or wrang." 

Unless one build on a foundation of self-respect, 
one's life structure, no matter how glittering and 
imposing on the outside, is corroded and honey- 
combed within, liable to collapse ignominiously at 
any moment. 

Self-respect can never profitably be sold for a mess 
of pottage. 

Self-respect, in a word, is synonymous with char- 
acter, since there can be no character without self- 
respect. 

First gain the respect of yourself and it will not 
be impossible to gain the respect of others; and this 
respect is one of the keys necessary to open the 
combination-lock of success. 



160 



How to Test and Develop Your 
Self-respect 

Self-reliance and self-respect are coordinates. 
The first is aggressive, but a man never relies on 
himself fully unless he respects himself. Every suc- 
cessful man has a very good idea of himself in certain 
regards. The gambler has a high idea of his shrewd- 
ness, but a very poor idea of himself as an honest man 
among honest men; the idle clubman has a very good 
idea of himself as a well-groomed gentleman, but a 
very poor idea of himself as a useful citizen. True 
self-respect admits of no compromise on any point. 
If you have true self-respect you have an inner 
conviction that you are a sound apple all the way 
through, without a rotten spot in you however many 
deformities or deficiencies you may have. 

A self-respecting man may get into debt, but he 
will go to his creditor and state his case frankly, 
and nine times out of ten he will have no trouble. 
Slipping out at the back door when a creditor comes 
in at the front door is a sure sign of inner sneakiness 
entirely inconsistent with self-respect. What is 
your natural tendency? If it isn't right, change 
it. 

A self-respecting person may make mistakes that 
will cause superiors to be angry, but he faces the 
music — his self-respect commands the respect of 
others even in trying circumstances. 

A self-respecting person may fail in business — 
even go through bankruptcy — but he faces his 
friends, he preserves his sense of integrity, and his 
friends naturally do just as he does, they continue to 
respect his integrity. 

161 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

A self-respecting person doesn't allow himself to 
be snubbed or slighted. He simply doesn't go into 
society where he is exposed to cuts. He doesn't 
cut the other fellow till the other fellow has cut him, 
but once cut he takes no more chances — he exer- 
cises a self-respecting reserve. 

A self-respecting person never allows a superior to 
require him to do anything that if published to all 
the world would even so much as shade his honor. 
If you don't like to be "found out" in anything you 
do, your self-respect has been sullied. The self- 
respecting person will not court publicity, but he 
will never be afraid of publicity in a personal way, 
because he has done nothing of which he himself is 
ashamed, inwardly. 

Here are the touchstones of self-respect in com- 
mon business situations. How do you stand each 
test? 

Do you walk on the other side of the street when 
you see a creditor coming? 

Something is the matter — your self-respect is not 
what it should be, and you should not lose a moment 
in correcting the defect. 

We all make mistakes in business — you must 
make them : do you frankly, freely, cheerfully admit 
them and take the consequences? Or, at any 
rate, are you prepared to do so even if policy suggests 
that you should not in a given instance rush to make 
known the error? 

Do you toady socially to anybody? Do you let 
people snub you without exercising greater reserve or 
restraint — or without flying into a rage and treating 
other people as they treat you? Reserve is self- 
respecting, resentment is not. 

Finally, how do you stand on "pitiless publicity"? 

162 



SELF-RESPECT 

Are you always prepared for it even when you 
don't court it as a policy? 

The habit of writing down answers to these ques- 
tions will go a long way to make this course valuable 
to you — it is one of the prime principles of personal 
efficiency as well as of business efficiency. 

Have you formed it? 



163 



JUDGMENT 

"Here lies one who knew how to get around him 
men who were cleverer than himself" is the epitaph 
Andrew Carnegie has written for his own tomb- 
stone. 

That is Carnegie's tribute to the value of possessing 
sound judgment. 

Without good judgment a man may have and 
exercise every other talent and virtue and yet fall 
short of success. 

Even ceaseless industry will prove of little avail, 
for if one is following the wrong track obviously 
the right goal will not be reached. 

Genius itself, unless directed by judgment, will 
accomplish no lasting results. 

What, indeed, is rated the supreme qualification 
in the higher reaches of finance, industry, and com- 
merce? 

The ability to judge men, to pick out executives 
of superlative worth. 

Next in importance — in some respects as impor- 
tant — is the power to judge affairs correctly, the 
power to analyze economic trends, the power to 
sense coming developments, the power to "size up" 
conditions of to-day and to judge what the morrow 
promises to bring forth. 

What is the one thing which has enabled the 
greatest international banking houses in America to 
attain their eminence? 

164 



JUDGMENT 

Not their money. Their judgment. 

The Pennsylvania Railroad has paid Kuhn, 
Loeb & Co. millions of dollars — for what? Chiefly 
for their expert financial advice, their judgment. 
And the guidance given probably has been worth 
the price paid for it. 

What has been the main reason for the United 
States Steel Corporation's success? The wise judg- 
ment exercised by the directors, and particularly 
by Chairman Gary, in handling the broader policies 
affecting not merely its own revenues, but policies 
affecting alike the general public, competitors and 
customers. 

Judgment is to a business what a knowledge of navi- 
gation is to a skipper. 

Bad judgment will land both a business and a ship 
on the rocks. 

Good results can come only from good judgment. 

What all does the term "judgment" embody? 
Just what is meant by it? 

Judgment comprises more than ability, more than 
knowledge, more than deft skill, more, of course, 
than conscientiousness. A man might have all these 
and yet be lacking in judgment. 

Judgment embodies all these, but it embraces 
other qualities. It includes a well-rounded measure 
of horse sense, gumption, mother-wit, poise, sanity, 
level-headedness, statesmanship, broad-gaugeness, 
tolerance, fairness, magnanimity, discernment, in- 
sight. 

Judgment might even be said to call for foresight, 
since the wisdom or folly of one's acts are often 
judged by the fight of what they lead to later on. 

De Lesseps won the applause of the world for em- 
barking upon the building of the Panama Canal; 

165 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

but events proved that his judgment in undertaking 
the venture, under the conditions then ruling, was 
unsound. 

Text books cannot inculcate judgment into every 
student who reads their pages. 

Judgment can be acquired only by acute observa- 
tion; by actual experience in the school of life; by 
ceaseless alertness to learn from others of greater 
parts; by study of the activities or writings or biog- 
raphies of men who have made notable marks, 
especially in one's own line; by striving to analyze 
the everyday play of causes and effects; by constant 
study of human nature; by the cultivation of a 
spirit of fairness, even generosity, to all; and by, of 
course, the most exhaustive knowledge and funda- 
mental grasp of the underlying principles and work- 
aday practices of one's own business. 

"A tall order!" you remark. 

Yes, so tall that few men can reach it in their 
rawer years. 

Judgment is one talent that executives scarcely 
dare to expect in youngish men. "You cannot put 
an old head upon young shoulders" refers very 
largely to this matter of judgment. 

But not always. 

Ralph Hayes, ex-private secretary of Secretary of 
War Baker, is a mere stripling; yet he successfully 
filled his exacting position chiefly because of his 
phenomenal judgment, his ability to pass upon what 
and whom should be placed before the War Chief, 
and what and whom should be disposed of otherwise. 

A roomful of railway clerks were at work in Chi- 
cago when a request came to the chief clerk to send 
the ablest one out to the stockyards to take a better- 
paid job with Morris & Co. The one favored re- 

166 



JUDGMENT 

turned, indignantly fuming that he would not work 
amid such smelly surroundings. Another clerk vol- 
unteered to go. You now see his name (Thomas 
E. Wilson) all over the land as head of one of the 
world's largest packing companies. The other clerk 
has remained an unknown. Which of these showed 
the better judgment? 

In the panic of 1873, when failures swept across 
the country like a typhoon, instead of losing his 
head and joining the stampede, one Pennsylvania 
youth borrowed every dollar he could lay his hands 
on, bought coke lands that others threw over as 
virtually worthless, backed up his judgment by 
building and operating coke ovens — and to-day he is 
rated as perhaps the second richest man in America. 
He is Henry C. Frick. 

"Any man who hasn't ability to judge for him- 
self would better get a comfortable clerkship some- 
where, letting some one of more ambition and 
abilitv do the thinking necessary to run the business," 
said D. O. Mills. 

It is not generally known that the Morgan bank- 
ing fortune received its biggest boost in the early days 
by a daring act on the part of its founder. When 
France was crushed and bleeding, her credit utterly 
gone, Junius Spencer Morgan, then located in Lon- 
don, undertook to supply the French Govern- 
ment with a huge loan. Other bankers thought the 
Yankee was crazy. But Morgan's judgment proved 
sound, and he reaped a colossal profit. 

War times have always offered exceptional oppor- 
tunities for those capable of seeing, seizing, and mas- 
tering them. 

Germany's doom is due to her woeful, her unbe- 
lievable misjudgment. She misjudged the temper 

167 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

and calibre of Belgium; she misjudged the attitude 
England would take; she misjudged the effect 
"f rightfulness" would have upon civilized people; 
she misjudged the virility and courage of France; she 
misjudged, as her crowning blunder, the character 
of America, believing that we were so enamored of 
money-making that we would submit to any insult 
and outrage and barbarity rather than, forsooth, 
forego profits on munition making. 

President Wilson's strength, his hold upon his own 
people and his place in the eyes of all civilized Euro- 
pean nations, are due in large measure to the calm- 
ness, the patience, the impartiality, the judgment he 
exercised all through the trying months which pre- 
ceded our entry into the conflict. 

And looking ahead, America's place and power in 
the world will depend upon the judgment shown by 
our business leaders, by the men upon whom we 
must rely to fight the coming battle for commerce. 

Cool, deliberate, penetrating judgment is as nec- 
essary in peace as in war. 

The victories of to-morrow are to be reaped by the 
ambitious, industrious, plodding young men and 
older men who have fitted themselves to weigh 
conditions and prospects and problems and trends 
and aspirations — and reach wise judgments. 

Life is an endless chain of judgments, from the 
time we feebly try to crawl to the time we pass on. 
We cannot escape the daily treadmill of decisions. 

Let us open our eyes to the importance of making 
our decisions wisely. 

The more imperfect our judgment, the less perfect 
our success. 



168 



How to Develop the Power of Good Judgment 

You will say that judgment is something born 
in a man, and there is little or no hope of developing 
it if he hasn't got it already. If he hasn't good 
judgment, how can he even know whether he has 
or hasn't? And how can he know whether he is 
improving it or not? 

There are several ways of getting around this 
dilemma. 

First, look back over your past history and see 
how good your judgment has been. Hindsight is 
proverbially good. That is not judgment; that is 
history. Look your history over and see what sort 
of judgment you have displayed, judging by the 
results that followed. If you decide that you have 
made a lot of mistakes of judgment (and all of us 
make a good many, but many of us more than 
others), what are you going to do about the future? 

The first thing is to decide why you made those 
mistakes — did you jump at conclusions too hastily, 
or did you fail to take the advice of people who 
know better than you? 

If you were too hasty in deciding, you can make a 
firm resolve that in the future you will decide nothing 
without thinking about it overnight. Any man can 
get a grip on himself and say, "I won't decide till 
to-morrow morning." 

Or perhaps you are too slow to decide. I know 
a couple who want to buy a house. They have the 
money, and they have looked at many houses, and 
have gone deeply into many plans, but they never 
can decide while deciding is good. They see a 
bargain. They can't decide. Some months later they 
see someone else snap it up and then they know they 

169 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

made a mistake not to take that. But they are still 
just as unable to decide about the next offer. What 
they need is to fix a limit for their decisions — "I will 
consider this just one week and then I will definitely 
decide one way or the other; I won't drift any more." 

But perhaps you decide, only you decide badly. 
What are you going to do in a case like that? 

Why, depend on some one or several persons who 
have better judgment than you. So many of your 
own decisions may have turned out badly that you 
decide definitely and once for all that you will let 
your wife do the deciding in important cases. That 
may be a mistake, like the rest; but you have plenty 
of time in which to make it. 

Or you may have in your business a superior to 
whom you tie, or even an employee on whom you 
depend. Many and many a successful business 
depends for its success on the fact that the person 
in control is guided by a person whose judgment is 
better than his. This is not accidental. That 
person has formed one good judgment, and he has 
stuck to it through thick and thin. 

Now with your little fountain pen just write down 
answers to these questions: 

Is your judgment good — yes or no? 

Can you improve it by taking more time to think? 
Or by taking less time? 

If your judgment is poor, as judged by past re- 
sults, whose judgment have you at command that 
is better than yours? Is there any one person whose 
judgment you will definitely decide to follow? 

Or will you stick to a system of getting a con- 
sensus of several opinions? 

This is the corporation method of judging, and 
American business teslifies how good it has been. 

170 



FRIENDS 

Make friends and you will make greater progress. 

"I do not wittingly employ a man who cannot 
meet other men and make friends of them in the 
meeting," declares Thomas E. Wilson, whose rise, 
unaided, to the head of a great packing organiza- 
tion, is a typical American fact-romance. 

"I had met Kitchener before he became famous, 
was impressed with his calibre and made friends with 
him," Charles M. Schwab confided to me. Later, 
Kitchener summoned Schwab and gave him war 
orders running into hundreds of millions. 

"I believe in making friends," Mr Schwab added. 

I have since learned that Mr. Schwab had simi- 
larly spotted Jellicoe as a coming man and made it his 
business to cultivate that naval officer's acquaintance 
long before "Admiral" was prefixed to Jellicoe's 
name. Schwab attributes his success in no small 
measure to the friendships he has made all through 
life. 

When the directors of a great enterprise need a 
president, to whom do their minds first turn? To 
some utter stranger? No; to some man they know, 
some man they have met, some man who has made a 
strong impression upon them, some man toward 
whom they feel friendly. 

Corporations to-day are willing to pay any price 
for an executive who is friendly with the public, who 
has won the public's confidence and good-will. 

171 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

Make friends and your friends will make you. 

Friendship eliminates friction. Enmity breeds 
failure. 

Henry Ford, in a sense, owed his start as a maker 
of motors to the friendship of a street vendor of coffee 
and sandwiches, " Coffee Jim," to whose lunch- wagon 
the impecunious young inventor used to trudge for 
a midnight cup of coffee when wrestling with his 
first experimental engine. Ford had made a friend 
of him. 

Henry P. Davison not long since was a guest of 
the King of England, and was entertained also by 
the Prince of Wales. This American banker's 
phenomenal rise is attributable in unusual degree to 
his success in winning friendships. Half the leading 
financial institutions in New York are officered by 
friends of Davison, by men whom he has grappled 
to his soul " with hooks of steel," men who would go 
through fire and water for him. "Davison men" 
has become a current phrase in the financial world. 

"Your friends can do little for you; you must 
carve your own path," is a truism. Yet not more 
of a truism than that without friends no man can 
reach and long stay at the top. 

When rulers lose the friendship of their people 
their house sooner or later loses the crown. 

No head of a great industrial organization who 
has forfeited the friendship of his whole force can 
long retain his place, for without friendly cooperation 
his administration must prove a costly failure. 

"The self-made man is an unfinished product" 
it has been wittily said. No man is a finished product 
who, in making himself, has neglected to make 
friends. 

A certain executive some time ago fell into disfavor 

172 



FRIENDS 

and it was freely rumored that he was slated to go. 
One of his powerful friends graciously let all know 
that he was to stand by him — and all tongues in- 
stantly ceased to wag. 

How often have men been made or unmade by the 
loyalty of their friends at a critical hour! 

** Can any man grow so big that he does not need 
friends? Can you not trace some gigantic bank- 
ruptcies to the trade lost through the notion of the 
executives that they were so important that the 
opinion of the world did not count?" asks Thomas 
E. Wilson, already quoted. Again: "For meeting 
many men through the day, learning from them and 
making friends, if possible, is my way of doing busi- 
ness. The path of an executive and of an organiza- 
tion which he represents is hard or easy precisely in 
proportion to the number of friends he has. Since 
one meets so many men but once, and their single 
impression grades the mark which they give to you 
and your business, isn't it worth while having the 
mark a good one?" 

"If you ask me for an axiom to guide you in your 
everyday life and work, I would simply say, Make 
a better friend of every man with whom you come 
in contact" was Henry L. Doherty's advice to a 
body of his young student- workers. 

The way to make a true friend is to be one. 

It takes the right kind of qualities to make the 
right kind of friends. Like attracts like. "Show 
me your friends and I'll tell you what you are" con- 
tains a real truth. 

The best friendships are not born of selfishness 
but of unselfishness. 

"No one," says Ed. Howe, "has ever done much 
for me. I may have expected a great deal from 

173 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

friends long ago, but I do not now. I have not only 
learned that if I expect a great deal of them I will 
be disappointed; I have learned that I have no right 
to expect it. Friends are like a pleasant park where 
you wish to go; while you may enjoy the flowers 
you must not cut them." 

To have sincere friends one must be a sincere 
friend. 

Friendship implies loyalty, esteem, cordiality, 
sympathy, affection, readiness to aid, to help, to 
stick, to fight for, if need be. 

The real friend is he or she who can share all our 
sorrows and double all our joys. 

Poets and sages all through the ages have reserved 
their loftiest language for the portraying of true 
friendship, true friends. 

Germany's crowning tragedy is that she is with- 
out a friend among the free nations of the world. 
Her cruelty, barbarity, beastliness, treachery, have 
lost her the respect of every decent human being on 
the face of the earth. 

The United States now stands high in the friend- 
ship of other peoples because she has demonstrated 
that she is the friend of every worthy nation. Even 
Latin America has come to see in us a true friend. 
China looks upon us as her staunchest of friends, 
because on a memorable occasion we acted the role 
of friend to her in her hour of travail. 

Some among our older generation of business 
leaders imagined that they were powerful enough 
to force their way forward without troubling to 
make friends. But in time most of them learned 
better. 

No. No man can make the most of his life, either 
in business or socially, without carefully andcon- 

174 



FRIENDS 

scientiously striving to win the right kind of friends 
as he goes along. As Ben. Franklin quaintly put 
it: "Mind your company. He that lies down 
with dogs will rise up with fleas." 

To put it on no higher plane, the man who has 
most friends of a desirable character has most 
potential customers — or, if he be a professional man, 
the most potential clients or patients. 

An aptitude for winning friends is an invaluable 
qualification for winning success. 

The young man who aspires to make his mark in 
the world, who aspires to merit honors from his 
fellowmen, must early and earnestly and unselfishly 
seek to deserve the friendship of others. 

The friend indeed is the friend when you are in 
need. 

Strive to be that type of friend. Strive to hold 
out the helping hand all along the pathway of life. 
Friendly acts are as loaves of bread cast on returning 
waters. 

Radiate friendship and it will return sevenfold. 

What is life without friends? 

Is not the aim and end of life to give and get hap- 
piness? 

And what happiness can there be without friend- 
ships and friends? 

Friends are essential to success. 

They are still more essential to happiness. 

And success without happiness is not true success. 

Therefore, to win place and power and honor and 
happiness, begin by assiduously and unselfishly 
winning friends. 

True friendship cannot be bought with money. 

True friendship can be bought only by friendship. 

To have friends, be a friend ! 

175 



How to Create a Circle of Friends 

Many a man says, "I wasn't born rich enough to 
attract a good circle of friends." Or, "I don't 
seem to have the knack of making friends — they 
don't come my way." Or, "My life is in a 
narrow groove where I simply do not have the oppor- 
tunity to meet people and make friends." Most 
people think of their friends as the persons they have 
happened to meet by chance and in whose company 
they take pleasure. 

Jesus Christ, considered simply as a man, is one of 
the best examples that history affords of how power- 
ful friends are made. He began by being friendly 
and helpful to the poor fishermen and others about 
Him. He tried to help them mentally, to be their 
friend. His desire to help them was so steady, so 
persistent, that He bound the poor people around 
Him to Himself and His cause so closely that they 
were ready later to lay down their lives for Him. 
And as time has gone on this determined devotion 
of very poor and humble people has developed into 
the friendship of the most powerful men and women 
throughout the entire world. He didn't live in the 
flesh to see all this, but the twenty centuries of his- 
tory show us on a gigantic scale the process by which 
you in your span of life can make friends of the 
people about you — forming the habit of service, the 
habit which is the central principle of American 
business success — and these in time will somehow 
become the rich and powerful. You can't go out and 
attract the rich and powerful directly and at first 
hand, except here and there by good chance. If you 
did, your efforts would instantly be under suspicion 

176 



FRIENDS 

of selfish scheming, and friendship never lives in a 
selfish atmosphere. Unselfishness seeks to befriend 
those who need you more than you need them; in 
time the person who is habitually unselfish and help- 
ful is able to befriend and help the person who is or 
becomes powerful, and in turn helps or befriends you. 

Many a man is careless about cultivating friends. 
He is content to amuse himself with mere acquain- 
tances, or has a distaste for cultivating strangers. 

Friends are very largely the result of a quiet but 
systematic effort. 

Are you, now, trying to build up your circle of 
friends? 

Do you see in every person you come in contact 
with a possible future person of power, a human being 
who might be worth cultivating, and consciously and 
regularly decide in your own mind whether or not you 
should go out of your way to make that person a 
friend? 

Check over your list of acquaintances — first your 
business associates — then your neighbors where you 
live — then your casual acquaintances. 

Which of them ought you to cultivate, as a real 
friend, get into more lasting and permanent re- 
lations with? 

When you want a person for a friend, be he or she 
high or low, the thing to do is to watch for an oppor- 
tunity to do that person a favor, to be of service. 
If the person seems to appreciate it, do him another 
service. If he is indifferent, don't waste too much 
time on that one, but seek another who may be 
more appreciative, more responsive. In this way 
you will certainly build by degrees a remarkable 
circle of friends. 

Friends are often driven away by personal habits 

177 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

of which we ourselves are entirely unconscious. 
Ask yourself, Do you seem to miss cementing the 
friendship of as many persons as you feel you ought? 

It may be some repulsive habit you have. Check 
yourself over and see if you cannot find out the 
cause — talk the matter over with some intimate 
friend you already have, for example, your wife or 
brother or father or sister. Then make a business 
of eradicating at once and efficiently that bad habit. 

You won't do it in a minute, but it will surely be 
worth your effort in the end. 



178 



COURAGE 

The world's heroes have been men of courage. 

Heroism is courage. 

"The world hates a coward" has come to be a 
slang phrase, but it embodies truth. 

Not one of us wants to be regarded as a coward. 

Cowardice is among the most despicable of human 
qualities. 

Cowardice, moreover, doesn't pay. Courage — ■ 
justified courage — does. 

Who have made the greatest successes? 

Men of mediocre courage ? Men of wobbly spines ? 
Men afraid to do and dare? Men who hesitated to 
strike out from beaten paths? ,. 

Nay, verily. 

Was Washington without superlative courage? 
Was Lincoln? Did not Fulton need unwavering 
courage to brave difficulties and ridicule and oblo- 
quy? Did not Goodyear? Did not McCormick?' 

Would Hill have earned the title "Empire Builder" 
had he not possessed and exercised almost super- 
human courage? 

Would Harriman have become "The Railroad 
Wizard," master of enough railway lines to encircle 
the earth several times, had he not struck out boldly 
and by sheer strength of brain and will and deter- 
mination overcome every obstacle, financial and 
physical? 

What in Roosevelt captivates the populace? Is 

179 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

it not his fearlessness, his prowess with fist and gun, 
his outspokenness, his detestation of pussy-footing, 
his scorn of mollycoddles? 

What has won Woodrow Wilson the support and 
admiration of many political opponents? Chiefly his 
quiet courage, his dogged firmness, his refusal to be 
overawed by the threats or the acts of Prussianism. 

Henry Ford is a popular hero, less because he 
supplies the world with low-priced automobiles, 
than because he had a long, hard fight to gain a 
foothold, because he persistently refused to capitulate 
to capitalists, and because he overthrew all prece- 
dent and flouted all prejudice by inaugurating a new 
economic order — the payment of a five-dollar-a-day 
minimum wage to his workers. 

Who is the hero most cited by the multitude? 
Steve Brodie — because he had courage. 

Why were the greatest idols of the past nearly all 
soldiers? Because battles used to afford opportu- 
nities for the exhibition of bravery. 

Why do wearers of the national uniform to-day 
arouse enthusiasm? Largely because the uniform 
typifies courage, daring, heroism. 

Courage is not less necessary in the field of 
business than on the field of battle. The battles 
of peace call for as great courage as the battles of 
war. 

The men who have done big things are those who 
were not afraid to attempt big things, who were not 
afraid to breast opposition, who were not afraid to 
risk failure in order to gain success. 

The timid prefer to keep close to the shore, to 
stick to well-trodden paths, to make sure of earning 
twenty dollars rather than running any risk in an 
effort to earn twenty thousand or twenty million. 

180 



COURAGE 

Granted, then, that courage — true courage, not 
"Dutch" courage — is an important key to the por- 
tals of success: 

How can courage be attained? 

Can it be cultivated? 

It can. How? By honest, conscientious, per- 
sistent, persevering effort, by inward consciousness 
that success is deserved. 

That's the main secret of it. 

"Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just." 
"Innocence is triple Armor." "Conscience makes 
cowards of us all." 

These sentences are eternally true. 

If we know we have right on our side it gives us 
confidence and courage. 

If we know we are wrong, if we know we do not 
deserve to succeed, our courage falters and our hands, 
hearts, and minds lose their strength. 

Conceit is not courage. 

One of the attributes of genuine courage is 
modesty. 

Conceit is a form of weakness. 

The youth or the man who has courage based on 
the knowledge that his courage is justified by his 
record and his ability is not apt to swank and swagger 
and bluster. 

That which a person has acquired by honest sweat 
and merit does not beget conceit; rather does it beget 
a spirit of humility. 

Great courage and great pride rarely go hand-in- 
hand. 

The best way to cultivate courage is to cultivate 
merit, to cultivate knowledge, to cultivate ability, to 
cultivate mastery of self and mastery of one's voca- 
tion. 

181 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

Knowledge is power. The man of power need be 
no coward. 

Ignorance breeds conceit. Wisdom breeds inward 
courage and self-confidence. 

The man who is master of his job is seldom flus- 
tered. He knows he can handle it, he knows he can 
meet every emergency, he knows he is equal to it. 

The weakling, the man not sure of himself, the man 
who is constantly afraid something will turn up to 
confound him, is at heart a coward, no matter how he 
may prate, and he is usually ready to blame his own 
shortcomings upon others. 

"The law of nature," said Emerson, "is, Do the 
thing and you shall have the power; but they who 
do not the thing have not the power." 

I once asked Theodore N. Vail for a brief "Success 
Recipe," and here is his reply: "Concentration, 
application, persistency, good judgment, imagina- 
tion — and courage. These spell success. Don't be 
easily discouraged." 

The failure in life hardly ever blames himself. 
The world's hand has been against him, he claims. 

The man of courage scorns to blame the world for 
his fate. "Master of destiny am I," he tells him- 
self — and he acts and plans and plods accordingly. 

The schoolboy who has mastered his multiplica- 
tion-table is not afraid when quizzing time comes. 
The fellow who has shirked learning it quakes in his 
shoes when called to the blackboard. 

And so it is in the school of life. 

If we have earnestly, painstakingly, honorably 
learned our part we face the show-down with con- 
fidence and courage. 

If we have shirked, we may assume courage, but at 
heart we feel the cowardice of guilt. 

182 



COURAGE 

The player holding a four-flush may put on a 
brave front and act with much display of boldness, 
but he knows that if he is called the jig is up. 

In life our cards are called sooner or later. 

Without courage the highest success cannot be 
attained. 

Without hard-won worth we cannot attain the 
highest courage. 

By mastering self, by mastering our job, we master 
fear and gain courage. 

In a word, worth is the parent of courage. 



183 



How You Can Develop the Right Sort op 
Courage in Business 

There are various kinds of courage, and each man 
-must decide for himself what kind he needs to 
develop in his particular situation. Let us cheek 
over your situation together and see where you need 
to put your mental effort. 

Are you afraid of your wife? When she insists 
^on spending more on your living expenses than you 
can afford, so that you are gradually rolling up a 
deficit, and you haven't the courage to make her 
face the truth and join you in living below your in- 
come so that instead of a deficit you can be actually 
saving, you are headed for those situations where 
men have defaulted and been sent to prison. You 
may pile up only debts which will be regarded as 
entirely legal but still you are living on other people's 
money, and worst of all, you are ruining your chances 
for final and permanent success. 

Are you so afraid of your companions that you 
cannot say "No" when they invite you to take a 
drink, or smoke a cigar which you know injures 
your health, or gamble a little when you know the 
effect is injurious to your moral energies? Pull 
yourself together right now. Face the music. 
Grit your teeth, and be firm. You can't begin a 
minute too soon. 

On the other hand, you may be a timid person 
who is afraid to spend a cent lest he come to poverty 
in the end. Such a man starves himself and his wife 
to death out of fear of extravagance, undermining the 
health of both. He denies himself and his family 
necessary recreation, intellectual enjoyment, all 

184 



COUEAGE 

the richness and beauties of life. In short, he is a 
miser of greater or less degree. All misers are simply 
cowards. You may not be called a miser, but you 
may be tinged with miserliness, you may be "nigh," 
and at the bottom you will find you are afraid to 
spend the money you ought to spend. Honestly, 
now, are you timid in that direction? 

Such a man usually is afraid to take any chances in 
business. All business is a gamble. Good money is 
always made by taking a reasonable chance. Be 
as conservative as you like up to a certain point — - 
then plunge. When Miss Opportunity comes your 
way, don't be afraid to embrace her and kiss her full 
on the mouth. Does a figure of speech like that 
make you shudder? 

Have you in the past let opportunity go by? 

Think it over. Have you? If you have, set your 
courage firmly to be ready for the next good luck 
that comes — for all men have plenty of good luck if 
they only see it and take advantage of it. 

The great fortress and bulwark of courage in 
business is knowing your job, your customers, and 
business conditions. Then when you have a good 
thing, nothing can shake you out of it. It is natural 
to have courage to stand to your guns till the fight is 
really won — that is the great courage we admire so 
much in the great business leaders of America. Are 
you slipping along on the surface of things, doing 
what comes easiest, what everybody seems to think 
is the proper caper? Or are you getting your feet 
down on the rock of knowledge where you can stand 
with firm courage when the opinion of the world is 
against you, or is apathetic? 

If you think you have plenty of courage, stop and 
see if it is the right kind. 

185 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

, Are you a hare-brained speculator? That is not 
courage. 

Are you ready to fight any man who calls you an 
ugly name? That is not courage. 

Or have you that solid firmness which enables you 
to say "No" quietly and in cold blood when you 
ought to say "No", or to say "Yes" quietly and in 
cold blood when you ought to say "Yes"? 

The way to develop courage is to be honest with 
yourself first of all — and then every day practice 
gritting your teeth mentally. A daily exercise in 
mental gritting of teeth, coupled with a constant 
effort at personal honesty and serious thinking, will 
do just as much for your courage as a daily setting- 
up exercise will do for your muscles. 

Do you need that exercise? 

And will you begin to practice right now? 



186 



SELF-RELIANCE 

"If I had taken the advice of others I wouldn't 
have done anything," said Christopher Hannevig, a 
brilliant young Norwegian who came to this country 
after the European war began, embarked in the ship- 
pings business on $10,000 capital, and in three years 
turned each thousand into a million. 

He had self-reliance. 

Without self-reliance no man can succeed in the 
largest way. 

Self-reliance has been well defined as "a multiplex 
virtue, the amalgam of courage, energy, hope, grit, 
enthusiasm, ambition, and endurance." 

Said John D. Rockefeller to me: "Young men 
expect to have far too much done for them. By 
learning their business thoroughly, and saving their 
money, they can equip themselves to do things for 
themselves." Mr. Rockefeller was a shining ex- 
ample of self-reliance in his active days. 

So were, indeed, most of our conspicuously success- 
ful leaders — Harriman, Frick, Stephen Girard, Wool- 
worth, Commodore Vanderbilt, A. T. Stewart, 
Edis r on, Hill, Vail, Gary, Robert Dollar, to mention a 
few. 

Self-reliance breeds courage, faith, determination, 
never-say-dieness. 

Self-reliance inspires a man to do the best that is 
in him. 

Without self-reliance, the difficulties that are com- 

187 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

mon to forging ahead cannot be fought and over- 
matched. 

Self-r.eliance is a well-spring of hope and inspiration 
and courage. 

It strengthens the will, the brain, the arm. 

It is as a strong pole by which you can vault over 
obstacles. 

Lose self-reliance, and you become weak, wobbly, 
vacillating. You balk at even the shadow of 
difficulty. 

Admit the danger of defeat, and you are already 
half defeated. 

It was Foch who declared that a battle is never 
lost until it is morally lost. The French had actu- 
ally lost, the battle of the Marne but not morally 
when he gave the command to take the offensive. 
And his beaten army won. 

Archimedes is credited with the declaration: 
"Give me a lever of sufficient length and a fulcrum 
to rest it upon, and I would move the world." 

Your modern Archimedes sets about making the 
needed lever and fulcrum. He does not wait to 
have something handed to him: he goes after it and 
either finds it or makes it. 

If you have no faith, no reliance in yourself, how 
can you expect others to place faith or reliance in 
you? 

Aim high and you may hit high; aim low and you 
are little likely to hit high. 

Don't be a Uriah Heep. Strive rather to cul- 
tivate something of the Napoleonic mind — Napoleon 
not only had self-faith, but he inspired among 
others such confidence that his presence at a battle 
was accounted worth a hundred thousand men. 

Said a veteran editor to me years ago: "Don't 

188 



SELF-RELIANCE 

put so small a heading on that story, or our readers 
may accept your own appraisal of it that it is not 
worth a big head." 

" Heaven never helps the man who will not act" 
was one of the wise sayings of Sophocles. 

"The world stands aside to let anyone pass who 
knows where he is going," said David Starr Jordan 
the other day. 

Ah! There you have the kernel of the whole 
matter. 

You must know where you are going. 

The ignorant person has no business to have self- 
reliance. 

Self-reliance must be well founded; there must 
be basis for it. 

To be self-reliant will avail you nothing if you 
are incompetent. 

You must, before placing confident reliance upon 
self, be justified in having self-reliance. 

David would have been an unspeakable fool to 
have entered the lists against Goliath had he not 
been a crack sling-shot. He had self-reliance solely 
because his self-reliance was justified, solely because 
he had made himself so adept at the sling that he 
knew he could hit the forehead of the swaggering 
giant. 

Our soldiers now going to the front might have 
all the self-reliance in the world, but if they were 
to enter the trenches without a day's training they 
would inevitably be licked; their self-reliance would 
be unjustified. 

When Saul of Tarsus became Paul the Apostle 
he exhibited superb self-reliance under the most 
trying and tragic of circumstances. But he pos- 
sessed the qualities which justified his self-reliance. 

189 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

The deposed Czar of Russia had no self-reliance, 
nor had he any business to have self-reliance, since 
he was a worthless lightweight. 

The German Emperor is the world's most con- 
spicuous example of overweening, unreasonable, 
fantastic self-reliance. And he, too, is doomed. 

Self-reliance must be sane. 

It must be founded on reason. 

To be self-reliant you must, to use a colloquialism, 
"be there with the goods." 

Get "the goods" before you get an overstock 
of self-reliance. 

Unjustified self-reliance is nothing more nor less 
than foolish conceit. 

Were an indifferent boxer to enter the ring against 
Jess Willard no amount of self-reliance would save 
him from defeat. 

Self-reliance that rings true, the brand of self- 
reliance that will enable you to batter down 
opposition, must be and can only be born of 
consciousness of merit, consciousness of skill, 
consciousness of thorough mastery of the matter 
in hand. 

Unjustified self-reliance will get you nowhere ex- 
cept into trouble. 

There is a book called, "Every Man His Own 
Lawyer." A wise lawyer once remarked that the 
volume should carry this sub-title: "And lose 
every case." 

The difference between justified self-reliance and 
unjustified self-reliance is the difference between 
conceit and courage, between vanity and valor. 

One's aim, therefore, must be to earn the right 
to feel self-reliant. 

The engineer does not try to send a hundred- 

190 



SELF-RELIANCE 

ton load across a bridge fit to carry only ten tons. 
Neither must one place a full measure of self-reliance 
upon a foundation capable of supporting only a 
meagre amount of self-reliance. 

Don't tackle Goliaths until you have toiled and 
sweated and practiced and trained to become a 
master sling-shot. 

The trouble is that those who should have the 
least self-reliance often have the most, and that 
those who ought to have a lot have too little. 

Be sure you are warranted in possessing self- 
reliance. 

Then let self-reliance possess you. 

Go forth with the courage of a David, of a Moses, 
of a Joshua. Or, if you prefer modern examples, 
with the courage of a Harriman, who, beginning with 
nothing, fought and overcame the most powerful 
and plutocratic interests in the land; the courage 
of a Woolworth who, though compelled to close, as 
failures, three of the first Hve stores he opened, 
cleaved his way steadfastly ahead and now controls 
more than a thousand stores which yield him a 
multi-millionaire's income; the courage of Edison, 
who has conducted probably a quarter of a million 
unsuccessful experiments, yet never becomes dis- 
heartened. 

The fundamentals of wise, warranted self-reliance 
are consciousness of ability, consciousness of innate 
merit, consciousness that you deserve to succeed. 

Just as wishing without working will get you 
nowhere, so puffing yourself up with self-reliance 
that is without proper basis will lead you only to a 
fool's paradise. 

When I start out to play golf I can muster up 
very little confidence that I'll win, but when I sit 

191 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

down to play a game of checkers I have an abundance 
of self-confidence. Why? Because I know I am a 
poor golf player, whereas I mastered checkers when 
a lad in a bleak back- woods country where checkers 
formed almost our sole amusement all through the 
long winters. 

The young daughter of a neighbor one day walked 
over her head in the swimming pool although she 
could not swim a stroke. Of course she had to be 
rescued. That was a species of unwarranted self- 
confidence. Another friend swam almost across 
the pond under water and emerged none the worse. 
His self-reliance was justified, because he was an 
expert swimmer. 

Learning to succeed is like learning to swim: 
you must have a goodly measure of self-confi- 
dence, but not too blankety much of it before 
you have mastered at least the rudiments of the 
art. 

"To what formative influence do you attribute 
your material success," D. O. Mills was asked. 
Here is his reply: "I was taught very early that I 
would have to depend entirely upon myself; that 
my future lay in my own hands. I had that for a 
start, and it was a good one. I didn't waste any 
time bothering about succession to wealth, which 
so often acts as a drag upon young men. Many 
persons waste the best years of their lives waiting 
for dead men's shoes; and, when they get them, 
find them entirely too big to wear gracefully, simply 
because they have not developed themselves to 
wear them. I have never accepted an inheritance 
or anything but goodwill from my family or rela- 
tives. As a rule, the small inheritance, which, 
to a boy, would seem large, has a tendency to lessen 

192 



SELF-RELIANCE 

his efforts, and is a great damage to him in the way 
of acquiring habits necessary to success." 

Develop robust powers — and exercise self-reliance 
in developing them to the utmost. 

Then develop robust self-reliance. 

Learn from others; but don't lean on them. 

You must do your own track-laying and bridge- 
building through the hilly territory that leads to the 
land of success. 

You must depend chiefly on your own strong 
right arm, your own well-developed brain. 

Possessing these, then go forward with firm step, 
eyes clear, head erect, prompted and propelled by 
unquestioning, unwavering, unconquerable self-re- 
liance. 



How You May Cultivate the Right Kind op 
Self-reliance 

The right kind of self-reliance must be measured 
with the accuracy of a fine balance in a scientist's 
laboratory. The moment it goes too far it is fool- 
hardiness — it is no longer self-reliance. That in- 
volves a new principle in your study of your own 
psychology. 

First of all, self-reliance should as a rule be con- 
fined strictly to one line of endeavor, which is your 
life work. Lack of self-reliance in all other direc- 
tions is called "modesty," and the man who has 
made a great success in one line, say as a salesman, 
and starts out to tell people what's what in some 
other line in which he has not been trained, say 
Music, he simply makes a fool of himself, to put 
it bluntly. There are a few exceptions — emer- 
gencies — but in general we may adopt it as a prin- 
ciple that we will cultivate self-reliance in only 
one line, the line of our life work. 

You adopt your life work because you have an 
inner conviction that you are in some degree fitted 
to succeed in that line. You can't prove it, but 
you have thought it all over so carefully that you 
are satisfied in your own mind that you can make 
good. At that point your quiet self-reliance can 
be simply unlimited. Don't talk about it. True 
self-reliance seldom goes with boasting or garrulity. 
But when it is up to you to act, act boldly, un- 
hesitatingly, with complete self-reliance. You may 
fail, you may have misjudged your powers; but 
that doesn't make any difference. In this line your 
whole life is at stake, and you have your whole life 

194 



SELF-RELIANCE 

in which to make good. Take your failure like a 
man and go at it again — and again — and again — 
and again. There can be no such thing as fool- 
hardiness in the determination to make good in 
your chosen life work. That is the place for un- 
restricted self-reliance, and it is about the only place. 

Many a man has walked up to the opportunity for 
which he has long been preparing himself, looked 
it full in the face, and then begun to get cold feet. 
He didn't have the nerve to bet on himself the last 
dollar he has. He would be a blank fool to bet his 
last dollar on a horserace; but when it comes to 
betting on yourself and your power to do the thing 
you know you must do or write yourself down 
a failure, you're a chicken-livered coward if you 
hesitate. 

I put it in plain language, because that is the only 
drug that will cure your sickness if you are subject 
to that kind of nervous hesitation — lack of true 
self-reliance. 

As it is very hard for any man to look himself in 
the face and write him down a fool and a coward, 
I want to ask you to check over your past history 
and see just what you did on different important 
occasions. 

Take merely the chain of events in your pursuit 
of your life career (nothing else) from the time you 
left school to go to work. 

What was your first important opportunity? 

Write it down. 

And how did you deal with that opportunity? 

Write down the answer with courageous honesty 
for your own private information. 

Then what was your next important opportunity? 

Write that down. 

195 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

Also write down honestly the way In which you 
met that. 

And so on down the list till you come to the 
present time. 

If you look back over such a definite written 
record, you will have very little trouble in deciding 
whether you have lacked self-reliance. If you have, 
the only thing you can do is to concentrate the whole 
force of your willpower on overcoming it. 



196 



SERVE 

When men take up arms for their country, they 
go into "service." 

This is the highest form of patriotism,the sublimest 
duty man can render his country. 

He is then "on active service." He is serving 
others. 

To typify that it is nobler to serve than to be 
served, Christ washed the feet of His disciples. 

Ancient peoples chose for their rulers the man who 
had served them best, those who had distinguished 
themselves by prowess, who had most successfully 
driven off enemies — the motto of the Prince of Wales 
is "Ich iden," I serve. Even in later days kings 
led forth their armies in person. They served. 

Then kings ceased to make service their first consid- 
eration; instead, they demanded the services of others. 

And thus they writ their own doom. 

Neither human being nor animal which ceases to 
serve lasts. 

The world had been ignoring this eternal truth. 
Not only rulers, but gigantic corporations, wealthy 
individuals and influential politicians had come to be 
solely concerned in serving their own ends, in having 
the people serve them, in using the people instead 
of striving to be useful to the people. 

With a jolt they have been taught the folly of 
their course. The principle of serving is again be- 
ing enthroned. 

197 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

Kings and corporations and railroads and multi- 
millionaires and politicians are learning that their 
very existence depends upon fulfilling the eternal 
obligation to Serve. 

If a man will not work, neither shall he eat. That 
decree expresses a truth as fundamental as the uni- 
verse itself. 

To work means to serve, to perform some useful 
service, to contribute some effort to turning the 
wheels of the world. 

Too many individuals and organizations of great 
ability and power imagined they could best succeed, 
not in working, in the accepted sense of that word, 
but by "working" the people. 

Business, especially Big Business, degenerated 
into a catch-as-catch-can wrestling match. Each 
tried to throw down the other. It became governed, 
not by the Golden Rule, but by rules which ignored 
ethics and flaunted the spirit of Christianity. 

"Do the other fellow before he does you" became 
a daily maxim. 

Competition became the business world's god, 
a god that justified every form of commercial ruth- 
lessness, a god that sanctioned any and every 
questionable practice so long as it knocked the other 
fellow on the head. The rights of the public were 
trampled upon without qualm. But there were 
and are eternal laws which no overlord and no trust, 
however powerful, can permanently override. The 
mills of the gods often grind slowly, but they never 
cease grinding. 

The light began to dawn that this new order, this 
new system based on might and not right, was not 
working smoothly, that there was some fatal flaw in 
it, that it threatened to break down unless remedied. 

198 



SERVE 

Wiser heads realized that there must be a return to 
just principles, that the rule of right must supplant 
the rule of might, that justice must be practiced, 
and not injustice. 

Gradually there emerged, as from the clouds, a 
clear ray of shining truth : To survive, men and business 
and corporations must serve. 

Success must no longer be spelled $UCCE$$. 
It must be spelled SERVICE. _ The fetich of com- 
petition gives way to co-operation. 

Within the last few years corporations and firms 
have taken to proclaiming that their motto is 
"Service." All business is nothing more or less 
than Serving. Business simply means performing 
some service which earns a reward. 

We have not yet reached the stage where those 
individuals or companies which serve most are al- 
ways rewarded most generously: but we are rapidly 
progressing toward the ideal goal. 

The young man entering business who is anxious 
to succeed must recognize that his success will be in 
proportion to the value of the service he renders. 
Indifferent service brings indifferent rewards. 

Great service, generally speaking, brings great 
reward. He who is ambitious to succeed must learn 
how he can best serve, how he can fit himself to 
earn high rewards, how, in short, he can make him- 
self useful beyond the ordinary. 

Our richest men admittedly are not in every case 
those who have rendered the people the most valua- 
ble service; yet it is broadly true that those who have 
won large fortunes have exercised greater skill, have 
studied deeper, have worked harder, have planned 
more assiduously, and have exercised greater foresight 
than the rest of us. 

199 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

And in future, rewards will even more often be 
in accordance with deserts. The question for each 
individual to ask himself or herself therefore is: 
How can I do most for the world? What is the most 
valuable service I can train myself to perform? How 
can I become of the greatest usefulness within my 
powers of study and discipline and exertion and 
development? 

Also the firm or corporation which simply acts 
on the motto, "Take care of Number One" will not 
go far and stay there unless it broadens its vision 
and its practice by taking care also of Number Two — - 
that is, the party with whom it transacts business. 

"Money," says John Hays Hammond, "is a good 
thing to have if you get it the right way, but real 
success can he only where there is service performed 
for the benefit of your community, your state or 
your nation. There is no success other than that. 
The deserved esteem of your fellow-citizens and 
their affection, if you are fortunate enough to have 
that with esteem, is the highest success that can 
come to any man." 

Says a notably successful business man: "If you 
are going to handle men — and to be successful you 
must handle them well — you must serve them. To 
serve them you must understand them. The study 
of men, including yourself, helps you to see the ways 
in which your service to others may be made more 
effective. I cannot emphasize service too strongly. 
Take salesmanship, for example. In selling things, 
you don't need to put a vast amount of energy into 
dilating on the mechanical or physical perfection 
of your product; it is more important to show what 
service it will do the purchaser." 

Always value must be given for what is received. 

200 



SERVE 

In other words, legitimate full-measure service must 
be rendered. There is scarcely a single door leading 
to success which cannot be opened by the key of 
Service. A too-current business phrase used to be, 
"Soak 'em." The modern version, and a much 
more workable and worth-while one, is, "Serve 'em." 
There has to be giving out before there can be 
taking in. There is sowing before there can be 
harvesting. Which is simply another way of saying 
that you must serve in order to earn a reward. In 
brief, to succeed, SERVE. 



201 



How You Can Develop the Attitude op Service 

The first important principle of practical psychology 
is that mental action and reaction are equal. Fix 
attention on an idea, and the naturally resulting 
action will come unless prevented by the force of 
counter ideas. That applies to one's own mind — 
fix attention on the idea, think the thought, and 
you have a natural tendency to do the thing. It 
also applies to influencing others — make them fix 
their attention on your generous service and they 
will have a natural tendency to reciprocate by 
serving you. 

In an autocratic country people do things because 
they have to, because physical force is so brought 
to bear that they must do things to avoid being 
very uncomfortable. That was the inherited idea 
of business in this country, free though it was 
politically. In business the prevailing method was 
to get a "corner" and "squeeze" the public into 
doing business. The trouble about that plan of 
doing business was that when people are squeezed 
they do buy what they have to have, but the moment 
they find a way to get along without such purchases 
they stop them, and they have a natural tendency 
to avoid the squeezers. Germany has tried the 
"squeezing" plan on the world and we can all see 
instantly how little chance a German will have to 
get voluntary business from the various peoples 
of the world it has tried to squeeze. The same last- 
ing prejudice exists against the "trusts" that applied 
the squeezing tactics in time gone by. 

The modern business world has discovered that 
since the mind works with almost mathematical 

202 



SERVE 

precision, generous service compels buying just 
as surely as corners ever did, and people feel they 
do not act under compulsion but quite voluntarily. 
This is a natural and entirely effective way of com- 
pelling business, and because it is natural it leaves 
no bad taste in the mouth, it has no after-results 
that are not good, but on the contrary it builds up 
that great intangible asset "goodwill," and it is the 
only thing that will hold business permanently, the 
only principle on which a sound and lasting business 
can be built. 

Now look your own case squarely in the face: 
are you or are you not operating entirely or only 
partially on the principle of service? It all comes 
back to the faith in your mind — do you honestly 
and fully believe that it is easier to make people do 
what you wish by first doing what will please them, 
than by trying to force them in any way? 

Now check up your business practices in detail. 
Take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the 
middle. On the left-hand side enter the different 
services you perform which ought to make people 
want to be your loyal and faithful customers. On 
the right-hand side enter all the little practices 
which are more or less in the nature of compulsion, 
things which people don't like but to which they 
submit for counterbalancing reasons. 

Probably you think you can't avoid those little 
practices, but consider them one by one and see if 
you cannot make an adjustment by which you can 
get free and voluntary action instead of action 
under compulsion. The importance of the details 
does not make any difference — the most trifling 
little things often influence the feeling and general 
attitude of the customer even more than larger 

203 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

factors. You can't put matters on a bargaining 
basis. The modern service philosophy requires 
free and helpful co-operation in every little point, 
regardless of whether it pays or not; and sooner or 
later the customer will pay heavily for other ser- 
vices, and will be glad to do so because of memory 
of all the little things you have done. That is why 
it is so important that you check up in this way the 
details of your business habits and practice. 



204 



LOYALTY 

"Loyalty!" replied H. P. Davison, the foremost 
partner of J. P. Morgan & Co. 

A party of eminently successful men were dis- 
cussing what quality they demanded above all others 
in selecting employees and associates. Davison's 
one-word verdict was generally endorsed. 

Loyalty is at the foundation of individual success, 
domestic success, corporate success, national success. 

The greatest empire of old was reared on loyalty; 
it crumbled when its leaders ceased to put loyalty 
to the state first. 

What has erected and held together the widest 
empire the world has ever known? The Loyalty 
of Britons in every branch of the British Empire. 

What has held together for centuries that amaz- 
ing organization, the Catholic Church? The loyalty 
of priests and members. 

Loyalty is as cement binding together the separate 
stones of a structure. 

What gives a great army its power? The loyalty 
of every soldier to his superior. Without such 
loyalty an army would be as ineffective as a rabble. 

What contributed to the collapse of the vast army 
of Russia? What contributed to the stampede of 
Italy's forces? Was it not the subtle, insidious 
sowing of seeds of disloyalty and distrust by the 
scheming Germans? 

Disloyalty disintegrates. Disloyalty dissolves. 

205 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

Loyalty embodies faithfulness, steadfastness, trust- 
worthiness, dependability, confidence, sticking-closer- 
than-a-brotherness. 

What does disloyalty conjure up? Treachery, 
double-dealing, stabbing-in-the-back, nefarious plot- 
ing, the stiletto, the hidden weapon of the assassin. 

What is the foulest, the most execrated, the most 
damned name in all history, sacred or profane? 

Judas Iscariot. From the moment that disloyal, 
treacherous follower betrayed his Master the name 
Judas has been synonymous with all that is loath- 
some, detestable and despicable. 

Asked the secret of the success of the greatest 
industrial and commercial business organization 
of the nineteenth century, its founder, John D. 
Rockefeller, told me: "We gathered together round 
one table the ablest brains we could find in the 
country and we hid nothing from one another. We 
each gave the business our undivided attention 
and loyalty." 

Nor could the mammoth United States Steel 
Corporation have succeeded had not E. H. Gary 
inspired loyal co-operation among the many in- 
dustrial giants and the scores of thousands of work- 
men who made up the organization. 

The spectacular success of Bethlehem was due, 
not solely to Charles M. Schwab's brilliant ability, 
but in large part to the loyal, enthusiastic and able 
support given by the fifteen young workers whom 
Mr. Schwab picked from the ranks and made his 
partners when the company was formed. 

Without loyalty little can be accomplished in 
any sphere. 

Even thieves have high regard for loyalty — says 
the adage, "There's honor among thieves." 

206 



LOYALTY 

Granted, then, the importance of loyalty, the 
question to be answered is: How can loyalty be in- 
spired and how can it be cultivated? 

To win and to engender loyalty the purpose 
in hand must be worthy of loyal, wholehearted 
effort. 

Any person convinced that strong drink is a curse 
to humanity could never become a loyal bartender. 

The employer who habitually cheats his customers 
has no business to expect loyal service from workers 
who believe in honesty. Too many employers ask 
their employees to deal questionably with customers 
and still expect employees thus trained in wrongdo- 
ing always to do the right thing in dealing with the 
employer. If you train a worker to cheat others 
you must be prepared to have him cheat you. 

A first requisite of success is to get into some busi- 
ness and into some concern which deserves your 
loyalty. ^ 

Loyalty does not consist simply of performing 
one's daily tasks. It means something so large, 
in fact, that words cannot adequately describe it. 

The loyal worker is prepared, if emergency arises, 
to sacrifice his own comfort, even his own interests. 
He must put the good of the concern ahead of his 
own temporary convenience. He must not only 
do his allotted work intelligently, but with enthus- 
iasm, with zest, with a will. 

A successful business woman recently confided 
that when she held only a minor position, which 
called for the addressing of envelopes, she "sent 
thoughts with each." 

That pictures in the mind the true character, the 
true conception of loyalty. 

Loyalty's relation to work is what the small boy 

£07 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

said salt was to meat — "the stuff that makes meat 
taste bad when it hasn't any." 

Loyalty is service "plus. 

Although hard to define, it is easy to detect. And 
the most successful bosses are eager to spot it and 
ready to reward it. 

Let a worker be ever so brilliant, ever so brainy, 
ever so ambitious, if his employers know he is not 
loyal through and through they will not for a moment 
consider promoting him to a position of great trust 
and responsibility, for disloyalty breeds distrust. 

At crucial moments in the history of nations, of 
organizations and of individuals nothing is more 
important than an appeal to loyalty. 

Mankind can never know to what extent the fate 
of the world was shaped by Nelson's immortal 
signal at Trafalgar Bay: "England expects every 
man to do his duty." 

There never was opportunity equal to that of 
to-day for the exercise of loyalty in its national 
sense. We can exercise loyalty — yes, we can live 
loyalty — now as never before. 

We demonstrate our loyalty or our disloyalty 
by almost every act of our daily life — by our eating 
or refraining from eating meat and wheat and other 
things needed by our armies; by subscribing or 
neglecting to subscribe for Liberty Bonds or War 
Savings Stamps; by contributing or refusing to 
contribute to Red Cross, Y.M.C.A., K. of C, 
Jewish Relief and other worthy causes; by indulging 
or refusing to indulge in unseemly luxuries. 

Americans have now opportunity to crowd the 
loyalty and the patriotism of a whole lifetime into a 
single year. 

Just as the nation demands loyalty as never 

208 



LOYALTY^ 

before, so do great business organizations demand 
the fullest measure of loyalty from their workers. 
If you can't be a booster for your job and your 
employer, boot yourself out. 

It still holds true that the person who renders 
loyal service in a humble capacity will be chosen for 
higher responsibilities, just as the Biblical servant 
who multiplied the one pound given him by his 
master was made ruler over ten cities, whereas the 
servant who did not put his pound to use lost that 
which he had. 

Loyalty can be rendered best by those who have 
best fitted themselves to perform loyal service, by 
those who have trained themselves, disciplined them- 
selves, equipped themselves. 

Loyalty to others involves, in a sense, unselfish- 
ness, readiness to consider first the good of the 
organization or the nation. Yet this unselfishness, 
this self-abnegation is not incompatible with that 
one sentence which sums it all up: 

"To thine own self be true, and it must follow, 
as the night the day, thou can'st not then be false 
to any man." 



209 



How You Can Solve Your Problems of Loyalty 

You are thoroughly convinced that loyalty is a 
good thing; but how are you going to apply it in 
your own case? 

Take a pencil and let us check over your situation 
together. 

We pass over all the questions involving loyalty 
in private personal relationships, such as loyalty 
to the girl you are engaged to marry when you are 
in the company of another who attracts you, or 
loyalty to parents when in company with com- 
panions you know they disapprove, and come at 
once to loyalty in business relations. 

You have an employer who is crooked. You 
know he will sacrifice you unscrupulously if he gets 
a chance. Shall you be more loyal to him than he 
is to you? 

In this case there is a conflict between loyalty 
to your own high principles and to an unscrupulous 
employer. There is just one thing for you to do — 
quit that employer as quickly as you can, and join 
yourself to an honest one to whom you can be loyal. 

It is the most flagrant disloyalty to yourself to 
continue the relation of employee to employer — 
subordinate to superior — when you know or be- 
lieve the superior is not worthy of your loyalty. 
If you are the superior, it is a different matter, it 
is a matter of judgment whether you will continue 
the relation or not, but most employers are deathly 
afraid of a disloyal subordinate, they don't want to 
take any chances doing business with that sort of 
person. I have done business with many crooked 
men (as customers), but I knew I did it at my 

210 



LOYALTY 

own peril and I was prepared for any emergency. 
It was a nervous strain that I found a serious matter, 
and in time I found it much more economical to 
confine my business dealings to people I could trust 
absolutely and with whom I could form a relation 
of mutual trust and loyalty. 

Again: you have an employer who is straight, 
but at times you think your interests and his do 
not coincide. Shall you adhere to your own in- 
terests or his? 

Your duty is plain. Either openly tell him 
what the situation is and that you feel you must 
take care of yourself in the circumstances, or if 
you don't tell him, sacrifice your own interest to 
his without a moment of hesitation. 

The ideal situation is one that ought to be the 
commonest, that in which your own interests coin- 
cide generally with those of your employer, and 
you feel a personal respect for him which you wish 
him also to feel for you. Then it is your duty to 
let your loyalty of service go the limit. Every 
business man ought to feel this loyalty towards his 
customers, just as every employee ought to feel it 
towards his employer — the loyalty that will make 
him want to go the limit in service. 

Are you in a situation where you can go the limit 
in service — to your employer, to your employees, 
to your customers? 

If not, get into a position \*here you can just as 
quickly as possible. 

If you are, is your loyalty of the limited or un- 
limited kind? 

If you admit it is limited, do you realize that the 
business is yours just so far as you make it yours 
by your loyalty? 

211 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

Get that clearly into your mind — your employer's 
loyalty to you is probably just equal to your loyalty 
to him. 

Are you satisfied in having him give you the same 
loyalty you give him? 

If not, increase the measure of your devotion to 
the business. 

Sit down and write a letter to your employer 
telling every detail of the situation. Talk it over 
with him on paper. Then tear up the letter. You 
will see the other fellow's situation more clearly. 



<m 



MEMORY 

The president of the largest corporation in America 
is the man who has the best memory of any man I 
know, James A. Farrell. 

A youth entered the Denver Consolidated Electric 
Company's office and made it his business to learn 
and remember the name of every customer so that 
he could greet each one on coming into the office to 
pay the monthly bill. To-day he is either ex- 
ecutive head or a director in more corporations than 
any other man in the United States, although he 
is not yet forty-five. He is Frank W. Frueauff . 

The great Chicago fire destroyed practically all 
the legal books and documents and forms in the city, 
and lawyers were in a quandary as to how to obtain 
the correct legal phraseology of various documents 
until they discovered one very young lawyer who 
could write absolutely correctly from memory 
almost every form of legal document. He is now 
head of the world's largest industrial organization — 
E. H. Gary. 

A Western farm boy made up his mind that he 
would train himself to remember names and faces 
as an aid to building up a wide circle of business 
friends. He can now call more bankers by name 
than perhaps any other banker in America and is 
president of the largest bank in Chicago, George M. 
Reynolds. 

The greatest railroad builder America has ever 

213 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

known and the man who did more than any other 
individual to create our Northwestern empire, 
James J. Hill, possessed the most wonderful memory 
I have ever encountered. 

The man who is now the largest retail merchant 
in America, Frank W. Wool worth, used to keep 
every detail of his business in his head. 

A good memory is almost indispensable to finan- 
cial, industrial or commercial success. 

More, memory is man's most precious of posses- 
sions — Insanity results from complete loss of memory. 

Our memory is exactly what we make it, good, 
bad or indifferent. 

Like most things, if neglected it will run to seed. 

But if properly trained it can yield a variety of 
invaluable fruit, fruit which can bring not only a 
fortune in the market-place, but happiness in old 
age. 

The lazy person complains, "I have such a poor 
memory." Or, "I was not blessed with a good 
memory." 

No human being was ever born with a good 
memory. 

Every strong, reliant, always-responsive memory 
had to be developed. It is the result of painstaking 
effort, particularly at the start, before the brain 
cells were trained so to operate that they could in- 
stantly respond to any and every call upon them. 

Like most habits, both bad and good, the habit 
of cultivating the memory grows and in time re- 
quires no conscious effort. 

Hill and Farrell and Reynolds and Frueauff and 
all the rest of them were not born with any better 
memories than ours, but each of them deliberately, 
earnestly, determinedly set about studying and 

214 



MEMORY 

striving to cultivate this faculty, and in time 
all reaped the reward their endeavors deserved, 
just as you and I can reap a reward commensurate 
with the effort we choose to put forth in this 
direction. 

In my own case, I could not do half as much work 
as I do if I had constantly to look up the things I 
have to write about. I can recall virtually every 
notable remark or statement any of our captains 
of industry ever made to me, a power for which no 
credit is due because it was born of necessity, as in 
interviewing it is often inadvisable to "frighten" 
the subject by pulling out pad and pencil to make 
notes — your quarry is apt to become very formal 
and frigid and pernickety about the choosing of his 
words; he begins to dictate a statement rather than 
to talk naturally. 

But I couldn't tell you which baseball team is 
heading the league, or the record of any race horse. 
I often forget whether I have seen a certain play or 
not. The reason is that I do not try to remember 
baseball or racing data, and I go to plays merely 
to be amused for the time being and have no ambi- 
tion to become a dramatic encyclopedia. 

When I asked James J. Hill how he came to 
possess so phenomenal a memory he replied: "It 
is easy to remember things that interest you." 

Mr. Farrell expressed the same truth in another 
way. He said: "I am interested in everything 
connected with the steel industry and shipping, 
because it is my business to know about them. But 
I don't try to retain information about all sorts of 
extraneous matters. By not cluttering up my mind 
with useless information there is naturally more 
room for the data I need to carry in my memory." 

215 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

A good memory, in other words, calls for a good 
forgettery. You must concentrate upon important, 
essential information and religiously keep out all 
rubbish, all impedimenta from your mind. 

The easiest way to forget the non-essential is to 
attach no importance to it, to refuse to let it sink 
deeply into your mind, to ignore it, to deny your- 
self the questionable privilege of remembering it. 

Memory may be likened to a mansion house. 
You can furnish it and decorate it wisely and beauti- 
fully, so that it becomes a perpetual source of plea- 
sure to you. Or, you can stock it with worthless, 
ugly, injurious things which cannot yield you sat- 
isfaction or profit of any nature whatsoever. 

Memory, too, may be pictured as a garden. By 
tilling it and conscientiously tending it, you can 
cultivate beautiful flowers and plants and fruits. 
By not tending it, only weeds will take root and 
grow. 

The memory is as soil. It must be constantly 
fertilized if it is to produce the best crops. Pains 
must be taken to plant the right kind of seed. No 
weeds or other noxious plants must be allowed to 
take firm root. 

What employer, think you, is likely to employ 
even an office-boy who cannot remember things? 

And the more responsible position the greater 
the necessity, as a rule, for having it filled by a 
person having an efficient memory, for questions 
will constantly arise which the person with a worth- 
less memory will be unable to answer. 

A superior memory is worth more than what it 
costs. It admittedly costs brain sweat. It won't 
simply spring into existence over night. A power- 
ful memory 5 like Home, cannot be built in a day. 

216 



MEMORY 

It won't grow and blossom of its own accord. It 
must be built up cell upon cell. 

You sometimes see advertisements guaranteeing 
to implant within you an amazing memory in one 
night or one week or one month, if you will only 
read some magical "method" devised by some 
gentleman who somehow has failed to put his own 
memory to any extraordinarily brilliant purpose. 

The waving of no fairy's wand can create within 
your cranium a well-developed memory. You can- 
not be transported on wings to your desired goal. 

You must work your passage to it. 

I do not mean to convey the impression that you 
can derive no useful pointers from responsible author- 
ities who have given the matter mature study and 
have written honest books to aid others. Indeed, 
it may stimulate you to take up seriously the study 
of memory cultivation if you read one or two legiti- 
mate books. 

But don't for a moment imagine that any second 
party can create a good memory for you without 
any special effort on your part. You and you alone 
can develop your memory. The work, the toil 
must be yours. You cannot pay the price in dol- 
lars. It can only be paid by conscientious, per- 
sistent endeavor. 

"Regular habits form the best basis on which to 
build a sound memory," Mr. Farrell once remarked. 

The youth who spends his evenings in harmful 
or even apparently harmless dissipation cannot ex- 
pect to enter his place of business next morning with 
his memory as sharp as a steel trap. 

Dull eyes, a heavy head and an improperly- 
governed body do not go hand-in-hand with a 
perfect memory. 

217 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

Any one who allows non-business subjects to 
monopolize a large share of his mind cannot avoid 
stuffing his memory with things identified with 
them, and consequently has less room, less aptitude 
and less inclination for the absorption of business 
facts, figures and other data. 

Drinking, even in moderation, dulls the memory, 
just as it imposes a thousand other handicaps upon 
its victims. 

A clean, healthy, well-ordered life is conducive, 
almost necessary, to a clean, well-ordered healthy 
memory. 

The human mind is such an extraordinary crea- 
tion that its potentialities are incalculable. By 
diligently going about in the right way, you can 
develop, not only your memory but other mental 
faculties to such a pitch that in time] you will 
be able to astound all your friends and win for you 
both outward and inward rewards totaling capital-S 
Success. 



218 



How You Can Develop a Useful Memory 

During the past fifteen years particularly, pro- 
fessional psychologists have made very systematic 
investigations of how the mind remembers, and a 
few books are beginning to appear which interpret 
these scientific studies for ordinary students. Here 
are the main principles: 

1. Memory depends chiefly on the original 
imprinting on the mind, on fixing the attention on 
just the features to be remembered. For example, 
if you want to remember a face you look at it hard 
for even a few seconds, noticing the length of the 
nose, height and width of the forehead, setting of 
the eyes, cheek bones, mouth, chin, color of skin. 
Get a few general types in your mind, such as the 
fair and delicate type, the muscular and hard type, 
the German type, the English type, the young 
American business type, etc., and then classify each 
face under its proper type. Fix a name in the same 
way, say it over in your mind once or twice, by 
imagination see it written in the mind, and con- 
nect the name with the face. 

Do you make a business of fixing your attention 
on one detail at a time, in systematic hard work, 
when there are things you know you ought to 
remember? Or do you say, "I have a poor memory 
— it is no use?" Anybody can remember who will 
try systematically. Are you trying? 

2. In order to recall that which is once fixed in 
the mind we must have a chain of associations — one 
thing next another so that when we wish to recall 
we can go from one fact or picture to another till 
we come to what we want. Some things are in the 

219 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

mind firmly, because so perfectly familiar. If 
when we wish to remember some new thing we will 
make a business of definitely connecting it to some- 
thing we know very well, by this association we will 
remember much better than if we try to recall an 
isolated word or picture or fact. As a simple 
illustration, try to remember this list of isolated 
and unconnected words: hat, hen, ham, hare, hill, 
shoe, cow, hive, ape, woods. Now form a definite 
picture of a hat, exaggerating it a little or thinking 
of it in motion, and then connect to that a mental 
image of a hen, perhaps thinking of the hen as walk- 
ing about with the silk hat on its head; next form 
a mental picture of a ham united with a hen (which 
is perhaps picking or scratching the ham which is 
in a large yellow sack), but omitting the hat; next 
a picture of the ham with a hare but omitting the 
hen; next a picture of the hare running down hill; 
and so on. In five minutes you will have a chain 
of ten pictures, each word appearing in two pictures. 
If you recall hat, it will remind you of hen; that in 
turn will remind you of ham; ham will remind you 
of hare, and hare will remind you of hill. You can 
follow that chain of pictures with astonishing ease. 
Then when you get that series of arbitrary images 
in mind thoroughly, you can use it as a series of 
pigeonholes for other arbitrary lists — say a grocery 
list such as bread, eggs, bacon, matches, tea, salt, 
sugar. Form in your mind a picture of a loaf of 
bread associated with a hat, eggs associated with a 
hen (easy), bacon associated with a ham, matches 
associated with a hare, and so on. 

Just work this out right now and see how easily 
you can recall if you have fixed your attention 
clearly in the first place, and then have formed a 

220 



MEMORY 

chain of association, or have connected the new to 
things old and familiar. 

3. Each person has his own special best way of 
remembering. The vast majority of persons re- 
member best visual images, but some remember 
sounds best, and some muscular motions, as the 
movements of the throat muscles in talking. If 
you can remember visual images best, translate 
every abstract thing into a picture which you can 
easily remember. The Loisette memory system is 
chiefly useful for its number code, figures being 
represented by letters which may be found in 
words which can easily be remembered. For ex- 
ample, my telephone number was Morningside 
5770, and a friend remembered it by saying to 

himself, " is a lucky cuss, he doesn't have to 

get up in the morning until he wants to." L — k — 
k — s (luck cuss) are the letters for 5770. If you 
need to remember numbers, by all means learn the 
number code, which will be found in all good memory 
systems, and in most of them is about the only thing 
worth a whoop. 



£21 



RECREATION 

The purpose of recreation is to re-create our 
energies, our physical strength or our mental powers, 
our zest for work. 

"The man who works fifty-two weeks in the 
year does not do his best in any one week of the 
year," Daniel Guggenheim, head of the greatest 
smelting and mining family in the world impressed 
upon me. 

"Some people think I was a slave to work all my 
business life. The trouble is," said John D. Rocke- 
feller, with a twinkle, "I was a bit of what would 
now be called a 'slacker' after I reached the middle 
thirties. I used to spend every summer at my 
country home near Cleveland and just kept in touch 
with business by a private telegraph wire. I am a 
believer in recreation." 

Andrew Carnegie, after he began to win his spurs, 
was a notorious truant from work. Hardly any of 
his time was spent in or around steel mills. He 
lived a well-diversified life in New York, with 
frequent trips to Europe, interspersed with journeys 
to the Orient and other distant places. 

The newspapers recently have chronicled the 
amazing activities of Coleman du Pont, who thinks 
nothing of buying a Waldorf-Astoria before break- 
fast, securing control of an industrial plant by lunch 
time, and becoming a dominating factor in a financial 
organization before nightfall. Yet no man goes in 



RECREATION 

more, whole-heartedly for sport and other forms of 
recreation than this human dynamo. 

Roosevelt probably holds the American record 
for variegated achievements. We all know how 
boisterously he enters into recreation. 

And have you noticed that President Wilson, 
with a great part of the world's responsibilities 
pressing on his shoulders, rarely lets a day pass 
without playing golf or automobiling or attending 
a vaudeville performance — it is not unusual for 
him to show up at the theatre three or four times a 
week when under any special strain. 

The man who fills the biggest business industrial 
job in the world, E. H. Gary, head of the billion- 
dollar Steel Corporation, often relaxes. So does 
Theodore N. Vail, whose achievements in the 
telephone field constitute one of the most remarkable 
monuments ever raised by one man. Both have 
reached the allotted span of three score years and ten. 

E. H. Harriman, on the other hand, never played, 
and he died from overwork at sixty-one. 

James J. Hill was wiser. He spent many an 
evening singing the good old psalms of David or 
listening to the violin, on which he was an authority. 
His other recreations were manifold; and he lived 
to be seventy-eight. 

Too many of us, especially when young, con- 
found recreation with dissipation. 

Real recreation quickens aspiration. 

The true purpose of recreation is not merely to 
amuse, not merely to afford us pleasure, not merely 
to "kill time," but to increase our fitness, enhance 
our usefulness, spur achievement. 

Any form of recreation that impairs either our 
physical or mental efficiency does not recreate. 

223 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

An evening spent in a saloon does not help a 
young man to attack his duties next morning with 
revived nerve. 

A coarse, vulgar comedy does not improve any 
one's mentality. 

Whatever dissipates physical or mental power 
obviously never re-creates. 

Many eminent men have found almost all the 
recreation they required through switching from 
one activity to another, through taking up some 
entirely different subject, even though it also called 
for mental exertion. 

There are almost as many forms of recreation 
and diversion as there are human beings. 

But it can be laid down as a universal rule that 
every man, woman and child needs some kind of 
recreation, some kind of relaxation, some kind of 
entertainment, some kind of amusement. 

Britain made what was regarded as an amazing 
discovery on this score after she had been feverishly 
waging war for more than a year. Early in the 
struggle the fiat went forth that factories, ship- 
yards, munition plants and every other vital in- 
dustry must work seven days a week, and that 
every man and woman must labor twelve or more 
hours every day. Output fell off alarmingly, yet 
the bosses were driving their forces to the limit, the 
wheels were kept going long into the night, no vaca- 
tions were granted. The government finally ordered 
an investigation by an eminent body of physicians, 
employers and psychologists. They found that 
where the longest hours were worked the results 
were the poorest. The whole system of "all work 
and no play" was immediately abandoned. Thea- 
tres, many of which had been closed, were re- 

224 






RECREATION 

opened; football, golf and cricket, which had been 
tabooed, were revived; social life, which had been 
frowned upon, was restored. 

When Henry Ford reduced working hours in 
his plant from ten to eight per day production not 
only did not fall off, but increased phenomenally. 

The United States Steel Corporation at one time 
encouraged seven-day labor, to-day it is under the 
ban. 

George M. Reynolds, president of the largest 
bank in Chicago, insists upon every one of his 
officers taking a full day off, in addition to Sunday, 
every week. "The pace is so rapid and the pressure 
so great that a man cannot stand up against it and 
do the best for either the institution or himself if 
he works more than five days a week," Mr. Reynolds 
explained to me. 

Edison won't employ as an officer any man who 
plays golf or who has any other hobby, but Edison, 
being a genius, has eccentric notions. I am told 
confidentially that the popular belief that Edison 
has always worked fourteen, sixteen or eighteen 
hours a day is partly mythical, and that the easiest 
way for one of his higher-up associates to infuriate 
him is to tease him on this sensitive point. 

How essential recreation is to efficiency is im- 
pressively illustrated by the tremendous importance 
our own Government, the British Government and 
the French Government attach to providing oppor- 
tunities for it among the armies now fighting to 
the limit of endurance for the preservation of 
civilization. 

The Red Cross and the Y. M. C. A., by furnishing 
amusements and diversion for the fighters, are 
rendering incalculable service in maintaining the 

225 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

moral of the allied armies. These organizations are 
worth a thousand regiments. Said ex-President 
Roosevelt some time ago: "Second only to the 
army in the work of winning the war comes the Red 
Cross." 

Too often in the past soldiers in war time sought 
dissipation, not recreation, because facilities for 
the latter were not provided. Dissipation saps an 
army; recreation strengthens it. 

Now, we are all soldiers; we all have to fight the 
battle of life. We need every possible aid and 
encouragement if we are to succeed. We cannot 
afford to neglect any means of increasing our power 
and our will to win. 

Whether we use our leisure to re-create power 
or dissipate power is of decisive moment. 

How we spend our non-working hours determines 
very largely how capably or incapably we spend 
our working hours. 

Do your evenings, do your Saturday afternoons, 
do your Sundays, do your vacations add to your 
mental and physical equipment for the battle of 
life? 

Do you make your play pay? 

Are you at your best on Monday morning? 

Or, after a respite from duty, do you return a 
trifle seedy? 

The average young man of sound health, who is 
engaged in a congenial occupation, whose heart and 
soul is in his work, does not need any great amount 
of so-called "amusement," for he will find real re- 
creation in studying things pertaining to his am- 
bition. 

There is far less danger of not taking enough recre- 
ation than in taking the wrong kind of recreation. 

226 



RECREATION 

The main point is that your recreation shall be 
helpful, not hurtful; then the quantity is likely to 
regulate itself sensibly. 

The brain grows on what it feeds. The starved 
brain cannot and will not produce brainy work. 

Recreation should re-create, rejuvenate and re- 
invigorate the brain cells as well as the red corpuscles 
of the blood. 

While success ostensibly is won during working 
hours, in reality it is most often won during non- 
business hours, the hours that are spent away from 
the bench or the office; the hours during which we 
are our own masters; the hours we are at liberty to 
use or misuse. 

The right kind of recreation is almost as essential 
to success as the right kind of education. 

Nay, the man or woman who has not learned to 
pursue helpful recreation is deficient in education. 

Books, walks, music, plays, athletics, automobil- 
ing, gardening, friends, conversation — each and all 
in their proper place can supply ideal recreation. 

Recreation need not mean, should not mean, 
rusting. 

Recreation should mean renewing one's vital 
forces, getting a fresh outlook and a fresh hold of 
life, imbibing fresh knowledge, refilling the well 
springs of joy. 

Recreation is not to be thought of as the end of 
life. 

Recreation is the salt which gives life its savor. 



227 



How You May Re-create Yourself Most Wisely 

If you want to accomplish the largest amount 
of work of which you are capable, you simply must 
maintain the balance of your mental, nervous, and 
physical powers. That we call "taking recreation." 
Every man needs a different program from every 
other. 

What ought your program to be? 

You need to settle that wisely and not by chance. 
It is said that a large proportion of the children in 
school are undernourished, and poverty accounts 
for only five per cent. Rich children are among 
the most generally undernourished — they haven't 
formed the habits of taking the food that is required 
to keep them in condition. The same is true of 
mental and nervous food. You are probably men- 
tally and nervously, if not physically, undernour- 
ished to-day — you don't take the right recreation. 
Let us check up on it point by point and see where 
YOU stand. 

Do you get enough exercise and fresh air? 

The slight, nervous build requires comparatively 
little exercise; but the big, muscular build requires 
a great deal more than it gets. You probably know 
whether you get enough exercise. If you do not, 
you simply must change your conditions — move 
into the country where you will have to walk a mile 
to catch the train even in the dead of winter, join 
a golf club or the Y. M. C. A. so you can visit the 
gymnasium every day before you have lunch. If 
your time is so limited that you feel you can't afford 
the time for these things, there is just one hope for 
you, to go to an expensive physical training establish- 



RECREATION 

ment where they will take one set of muscles after 
another and go through your body in twenty minutes, 
following with a Turkish bath and massage, a cold 
shower, and twenty minutes of rest on a couch. 
Three hours a week of that sort of treatment will 
probably keep you in condition. 

But just what do you need? 

Write down the possibilities, and then decide 
right now which you will take. 

Will you do that now? 

Also, do you sleep out of doors on a porch even in 
winter? Do you sit in an office where the window 
is open all the year round and there is a free move- 
ment of air? 

Do you take deep-breathing exercises every 
morning? 

EVERY ONE needs fresh air, the slight and 
nervous quite as much as the muscular person. 

Next, how do you get nervous relaxation? 

Is your work physical so that you need mental 
relief? 

Or is it mental, so that you need physical and 
social? 

Are you getting enough social relief? Or are 
you getting too much? Too much and too little 
are equally bad. If you need social relief and do 
not have congenial friends, what shall you do? 

Go to the theatre. Go to church. Join a club. 
Anybody can join an improvement club, to work 
for others, and in working for others you will cer- 
tainly get just the social relief you need and you 
will be astonished at how much you will enjoy the 
work. 

If you need mental relief, join a study club or a 
study class, or take a correspondence course. 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

If you see people too much, shut yourself up 
quietly three evenings every week and read a good 
book. 

Or would spending the time teaching and enter- 
taining your children, or younger brothers and 
sisters two or three evenings a week give you the 
relief you need? 

Write down each one of these heads, and op- 
posite it write a single sentence summarizing your 
situation and needs in regard to it. 

Life is a complicated thing, and you can't pos- 
sibly tell where you stand unless you set down every 
point and decide on that point by itself where you 
stand, and then later balance up all of the different 
points as a separate, final mental operation. 

Enjoyment comes in the highest degree not from 
going out to seek "fun" and trying to chop it out 
of life with an axe, so to speak, but in calmly study- 
ing your mental and nervous and physical nature 
and deciding what parts are underfed, what parts 
overfed, so that you can deliberately find employ- 
ment for the neglected parts. 

Doing those things will give you more real plea- 
sure than you ever had before in your life, whether 
people ordinarily would call what you do recrea- 
tion or work. Digging a ditch is the finest kind 
of recreation for one man, and studying Herbert 
Spencer's "First Principles" for another. The 
theatre, church, the club, and sport of course suit 
the big majority. 

Just what, now, should your personal program be? 

Write it out. 



230 



PERSONALITY 

Personality is the sum of what a man or woman is. 

Personality means character — plus. 

Many persons have a good character but a poor 
personality. 

Personality signifies something more than honesty, 
truthfulness, industry and the like. It embraces 
all these and something more. 

Personality implies pleasing, winning ways, gra- 
ciousness, heartiness, enthusiasm, magnetism. 

Personality is not indispensable for an astronomer, 
a philosopher, a scientist, an archaeologist, for pro- 
fessions which do not depend upon mixing with other 
human beings. 

To-day, however, the man who would succeed 
in a large way as a banker, a corporation manager, 
a merchant, a railroad executive, or a manufacturer 
must possess the right stamp of personality, for, 
without personality, he cannot attract a full number 
of friends, cannot secure a maximum of business, 
cannot inspire confidence, cannot create loyalty 
among his workers. 

In selecting men for highly responsible positions 
financiers and corporation heads attach more im- 
portance to personality to-day than ever before. 

All business is really the art of pleasing, and only 
the man or woman with the right kind of person- 
ality can please. 

In former times less attention was paid to pleasing 

231 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

the public; to-day no man who cannot please the 
public is eligible for the highest business places. 

Theodore P. Shonts is rated as a capable railroad 
operator, but his personality is such that he is a 
lamentable misfit as president of New York's trac- 
tion system, for he has utterly failed to please the 
public. He simply has not the right personality. 

The Rothschilds used to be a powerful influence 
in American finance, but the man who has rep- 
resented them here for the last generation is of 
such a, type that the Rothschilds' place and power 
in this country have waned almost to the finishing 
point. August Belmont is another illustration of 
a man possessing an unfortunate personality. 

Charles M. Schwab, on the other hand, is a con- 
spicuous example of the type of personality that 
wins. Even his keenest competitors love him. 
His employees would go through fire and water 
for him. He combines with inexhaustible energy 
and transcendent ability the most charming of 
manners, a smile that never fails to captivate. His 
definition of personality is extremely happy: "That 
indefinable charm that gives to men what perfume 
gives to flowers." 

I asked Albert H. Wiggin, Chairman of the great 
Chase National Bank of New York, what quality 
attracted him to the young man (36) he has brought 
from Boston to be president of the bank, Eugene 
V. R. Thayer, and the instant reply was: "His 
personality and record." Personality was placed 
first, you will notice. 

The original J. P. Morgan was first attracted to 
H. P. Davison, then a young vice-president of a bank, 
by his personality. Later Mr. Davison became the 
foremost member of the house of Morgan & Co. 

232 / 



PERSONALITY 

When Sarah Bernhardt, a scraggy, unlovely, 
unknown young woman first ascended the stage she 
was sneered at. What enabled her to become the 
greatest actress the world has ever seen? Her per- 
sonality — her fire, verve, sympathy, courage, her 
insight into human nature, her ability to interpret 
human emotions, her never-say-die spirit. 

What makes ex-President Taft one of the most 
popular men in America? His affable, hearty per- 
sonality. 

Lloyd George, the Prime Minister of Britain, 
has an arresting, impelling personality. Time was 
when the English aristocrats frowned upon this 
impecunious, plebeian lawyer; but his heart was in 
the right place, and his sincerity and earnestness and 
consideration for others first captivated the poor and 
finally won him the highest political office in Europe. 

And what made Americans go mad over "Papa" 
Joffre when he visited this country? His person- 
ality, of course. 

When young John D. Rockefeller announced 
that he was going to visit Colorado at the height of 
the turmoil there over the labor strikers and tragedies 
his friends sought to dissuade him by telling him he 
would be murdered. What was it that enabled him 
to conquer the very roughest of the miners and the 
most infuriated of the miners' wives? His money? 
No; the possession of so much money was one of 
his worst crimes. It was nothing but the young 
man's unaffected, sympathetic, democratic person- 
ality that disarmed everyone wherever he went. 
When he slept in a miner's hut he needed no guards 
to watch over his safety. Had Mr. Rockefeller's 
personality been obnoxious, upsetting, arrogant, 
would he have had such an experience, think you? 

233 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

Personality is the embodiment of all that we are. 

To have a gracious personality we must cultivate 
graciousness. 

To have a personality that radiates the right quali- 
ties we must possess the right qualities. 

Each of us carries with us an aura; we each make 
a certain impression upon those we meet. 

Our aura is nothing but our personality and the 
effect our personality has upon others. 

Why do the heads of large organizations never 
engage a man for a position of great responsibility 
without seeing him and interviewing him? Simply 
because they want to size up his personality. A 
photograph may tell a man's appearance, but ap- 
pearance is not the whole of personality. 

Personality embraces certain intangible qualities, 
certain indefinable characteristics that the camera 
cannot portray. 

How often have you heard it said: "Mr. So-and-So 
is a very able man; too bad he has so unfortunate a 
personality." 

Personality is not something that is of the sur- 
face. It goes to the roots of a person. 

When we say of a woman that she has "charm" 
we simply mean that she has a delightful, lovable 
personality. 

The masculine of "charm" is "personality." 

J. M. Barrie, the most pleasing and brilliant of 
all our living playwriters, says in "What Every 
Woman Knows" that, if a woman has charm, she 
needs nothing else. 

If a man has twenty-four carat personality he 
needs nothing else — but twenty-four carat person- 
ality must and will carry with it all the qualities 
that go to make up the finest type of manhood. 

234 



PERSONALITY 

We cannot wear the right kind of personality and 
be the wrong kind of person. 

We may, however, have brilliant talents and un- 
selfish natures and yet fail to cultivate or exhibit the 
kind of personality that inspires love, admiration, 
respect. 

Personality may be defined as the right kind of 
character in the right kind of wrapper. 

The workshop, the office, the bank and the world 
have no dearth of men of education : men of technical 
skill, men of full-measure ability. 

But there is a dearth of men possessing these 
qualifications plus personality. 

And what the workshop, the office, the bank and 
the world are seeking is just such men. 

It is worth while striving to become one of them. 
A reader and friend (William H. Rankin) has sent 
me this "Key to Success." You will notice that 
the initial letters spell Personality. 
Be 

Persistent 
Enthusiastic 
Respectful 
Systematic 
Original 
Natural 
Alert 
Loyal 

Imaginative 
Truthful 
Youthful. 
If you build up a rich personality you will be able 
to build up a passably rich purse. 



235 



How You Can Develop the Power of 
Personality 

Personality is a compound of many other qualities 
such as courage, cheerfulness, politeness, etc., but 
in the business world it is regarded as something 
different from any of these. It is the most intan- 
gible of all personal qualities, and therefore the 
hardest to develop in a systematic way. Yet there 
are various practical ways of dealing with the matter. 

The writer's brother after leaving the high school 
had been working for a wholesale drygoods house 
for several years for less than ten dollars (a good 
many years ago, when wages were lower than they 
are now). He couldn't make out why he didn't get 
ahead, and neither could his friends. 

Because he didn't get ahead, when a change in the 
business made an excuse to drop him he was let out. 
He heard of a chance to go on the road for one of 
the manufacturing concerns which had been selling 
the house goods, and got an appointment at $10 a 
week and expenses. His old manager called him 
into his office and congratulated him, and gave 
him some good advice. Said he, "You are going on 
the road in a new business, and you have a chance to 
get a fresh start and so determine all your future life. 
It is very important for you to make good. My 
advice is to go over to Dunn, the tailor and order an 
$80 suit of clothes, an $80 overcoat, and all the 
fitting that go with good clothes, amounting to 
$200 or so. I know you haven't that amount of 
money, but here is my card and Dunn will trust 
you." This young man was wise enough to take the 
advice; he made a wonderful success on the road 
from the start, and now for years has been the lead- 

236 



PERSONALITY 

ing salesman for that same house, covering the New 
England territory. The clothes made him feel like 
a success, the remembrance of his debt made him 
feel that he had to make good. He had lacked 
personality, or certain elements of personality, 
but these clothes had given what he did not have. 

The writer himself lacks the personality to make a 
good salesman. He never catches sight of his face 
in a mirror without seeing his own weakness in the 
expression and coloring of that face. By sheer 
enthusiasm he has at times made sales, or by sheer 
knowledge of his subject. But his chief successes have 
been secured through making contracts with others 
who did have the personality to sell what he produced. 

Write down the chief points about your person- 
ality. Here are a few suggestive questions, but you 
will have to make up a good many more of your own. 

Do people distinctly like you when they meet you? 
Do they dislike you? Are they indifferent? Why? 

Would good clothes make you feel more like a real 
success? If so, they would improve your personality. 

Have you vulgar habits of any sort that drive 
people from you? These are very likely to be 
unconscious on your part, and you will probably have 
to pump some intimate friend or relative long and 
hard to find out just what they are. When you get 
a few hints you will have to observe for yourself. 
Write down a list of these habits that may drive 
people away — vulgar habits of eating, loud talking 
in a disagreeable voice, lack of conventional polite- 
ness, lack of deference to superiors. 

Do you look repulsive in your face? Have you a 
bad breath? Can you improve your personality 
by attention to health, or by face treatment of any 
sort? Or can you improve your hands? 

237 



FOUNDATIONS 

If you want to build up astrong, enduring worth- 
while life, you must lay the right kind of foundations. 

Massive, noble, venerated structures cannot be 
raised on faulty foundations. 
. Shanties can. 

But who would elect to make of his life a puny, 
miserable, tumble-down shanty if, by taking proper 
thought and action, he could erect a more worthy 
monument? 

The time to lay sound foundations is now. 

All success has foundations — just as failure has 
foundations, of different character. 

The world's rewards for solid foundation-build- 
ing may not come for five years or fifteen years or 
even fifty years. 

The more valuable, though intangible, inward re- 
wards are garnered right along. 

Ninety per cent, of the joy of achievement comes 
from the effort, only ten per cent., or less, from the 
outward rewards success brings. 

Dig into the early records of our most successful 
men in every walk of life and you will find, almost 
without exception, that solid, painstaking, brain- 
sweating foundations were laid during year after 
year of obscurity, when no applause, no encourage- 
ment, no recognition came from the world. 

How much midnight oil did President Wilson 
burn in poring over the history of mankind and 

238 



FOUNDATIONS 

mankind's institutions before his fitness for the 
leadership of mankind was recognized by the 
world? He was fifty-five before he was awarded 
his first public office. 

Edison began experiments with electricity al- 
most as soon as he could read; was dropped from 
the school roll because of his mental deficiencies; 
set up a laboratory on the train on which he was a 
newspaper boy; experimented night and day when 
serving the local stationmaster as office-boy; was 
repeatedly dismissed from telegraph offices because 
he was not content to pound keys and transcribe 
messages day after day, but persisted in testing 
original inventions; landed in New York penniless — 
but with his head full of knowledge and foundations 
laid for future success. Every one of his many thou- 
sands of experiments he counted as a useful stone 
laid in his structure of experience, "for," as he is 
fond of remarking, "an experiment which doesn't 
work is not waste effort, since it tells you that the 
thing can't be done that way and lets you know 
you must try another way." Yes, Edison laid 
unspectacular foundations through many toilsome 
years. 

So with the inventor of the now famous Browning 
gun. Although it took a world war to win John M. 
Browning the plaudits of his fellow-countrymen, 
and though his hair by then had turned gray, yet 
all through the years since he fought off Indians 
when a youth, he had never ceased to study and 
make and improve firearms. 

Take the New York Times, the most notable and 
most successful of all America's daily newspapers: 
its rise from bankruptcy and mediocrity to pros- 
perity and national leadership was and is founded 

239 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

on the clean, wholesome, strong, principled founda- 
tions laid by Adolph S. Ochs from the time he was 
a printer's devil on a small Southern sheet, founda- 
tions which stand the test of time and stress and 
success. 

Coleman du Pont, chief owner of New York's 
largest skyscraper, the Equitable Building, ex-con- 
troller of the great Equitable Life Assurance Society, 
the originator of various huge enterprises, ex- 
powder giant, the country's most aggressive road- 
builder, owner of the Waldorf-Astoria and other 
large hotels — this hustler began his foundation- 
laying in a Southern coal mine, where he graduated 
from mule driver to manager and passed on, as he 
says, "to tackle something new — I always want 
to be building something, if only a dog kennel." 

And what of other business men whose names 
are now household words throughout the land? 
E. H. Gary, commander of the world's largest 
army of industrial workmen, though starting as 
a farm boy, early learned, under the tuition of stern 
New England parents, the necessity for diligently 
laying proper foundations. From hard work and 
long hours on the farm, he progessed to a law office, 
thence to law college in Chicago, was picked by 
its president as the graduate best fitted to fill an 
official court position, won general recognition for 
his exact and comprehensive knowledge of legal 
forms and documents (imbibed by the hardest of 
study), set up in practice early in his twenties, 
succeeded, became the foremost citizen of his native 
Illinois town, Wheaton, was elected its first mayor 
on its conversion into a city, was raised to the bench 
while still in his thirties, studied corporation law 
and business problems so assiduously and so suc- 

240 



FOUNDATIONS 

cessf ully that he put through the first gigantic steel 
merger in this country and was declared by the late 
J. P. Morgan to be the one man and the only man in 
America fitted to head the billion-dollar United 
States Steel Corporation — a judgment which has 
been richly fulfilled. Gary, you thus see, was not 
pitchforked into his exalted position. He laid 
foundations and built solidly on them day and 
night. 

There are stories of industrious, diligent, vig- 
ilant foundation-laying, also, behind the rise of 
such men as Albert H. Wiggin, chairman of the 
Chase National Bank; Seward Prosser, president 
of the Bankers Trust Company; Earle D. Babst, 
president of the American Sugar Refining Com- 
pany; Irving T. Bush, of Bush Terminal fame; 
Harvey D. Gibson, president of the Liberty Na- 
tional Bank; Charles E. Mitchell, President of the 
National City Company; Samuel McRoberts, bank- 
er, and later of the Ordnance Department at Wash- 
ington; Henry L. Doherty, creator and developer 
of public utility organizations; E. M. Statler, of 
Statler Hotel fame; Clarence M. Wooley, president 
of the American Radiator Co; and a host of other 
successful men whose careers are less well known 
than they deserve to be. 

A newly-made road may look smooth and firm 
and beautiful, but if its foundations have not been 
honestly and substantially laid it will quickly go to 
pieces when subjected to heavy traffic. 

It's often the unseen parts that count most. 

When the supreme test comes, the result is al- 
ways determined by what has gone before, by the 
preparations made to meet it, by the make-up and 
the record of the person under test. 

241 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

The time to prepare for the test is not the 
day or the hour when it comes, but from the very 
start and all through the years leading up to the 
test. 

The fate of a ship caught and tossed in a fierce 
storm, when giant waves throw themselves with 
fury on bow and body and stern, may be less de- 
pendent upon the seamanship of the captain on 
the bridge than upon the original soundness or 
rottenness of some hidden beam used by a ship- 
worker, upon the {lawlessness or faultiness of some 
obscure stanchion when rolled in a steel mill, upon 
the carefulness or carelessness with which a few 
nails or a few rivets had been driven when the ship 
was being built. The life or death of the ship and 
all her precious human freight may hang on the 
delinquency of one man at some moment years 
before. 

Storms test foundations, search out secret weak 
spots, reveal unconscientious workmanship. 

Germany set out to dominate the whole world. 
But her foundations were wrong. She sought to 
build on cruelty, autocracy, tyranny, barbarity, 
blood, bestiality; on might, not right; on servi- 
tude, not service; on force, not freedom; on lust 
of conquest, not liberty. And, as sure as God was 
in Heaven, all her diabolical planning and schem- 
ing and butchery was destined to come to naught. 

America was founded on other foundations and 
has prospered on other principles. 

The most important foundation-laying that ever 
confronted mankind must hereafter be under- 
taken, namely, the foundations for durable world 
peace. These foundations must and will have as 
their rockbed the principles laid down for all human- 

242 



FOUNDATIONS 

ity and for all time by "The Prince of Peace," our 
Elder Brother, for on no other base can there be 
established lasting peace and the brotherhood of 
man. That is the final goal towards which all 
things and all human endeavor must trend. 

"Nothing is ever settled until it is settled right." 
Germany aspired to settle things by "our strong 
sword," as the Kaiser was fond of pompously declar- 
ing. The German sword, however, struck at 
mercy, at humanity, at righteousness. The sword 
of America and America's Allies was unsheathed 
to strike down cruelty, inhumanity, tyranny, un- 
righteousness. Our exalted purpose was and is 
to "make the world safe for democracy," which 
means you and me and every other human being 
prepared to live and let live, prepared to do justly 
and to walk humbly and uprightly. 

As with nations, so with individuals. 

The eternal verities stand. 

Foundations must be built on such tested-and- 
tried pillars as honesty, industry, self-sacrifice, 
truth, politeness, self-discipline, watchfulness, en- 
thusiasm, loyalty to others and to self, frugality, 
sincerity, purposefulness — and, not least, common- 
sense. 

To-day and each day we lay to-morrow's foun- 
dations. 

We are all, always, building foundations, either 
good or bad, solid or hollow, firm or frail. 

Every act is a hammer-stroke. 

One coral insect appears to be of infinitesimal 
importance. But in time one such insect laid 
upon another can wreck the staunchest ship that 
ever sailed the sea. 

Our hourly thoughts and acts, each in itself 

243 



FOUNDATIONS 

apparently of no moment, in time build our foun- 
dations and erect thereon our life's structure. 

What kind of foundation are we building to- 
day? Will we because of to-day's efforts be stronger 
or weaker to-morrow? 



244 



Check-up on Your Personal Foundations for 
Success 

We have now come to the end of this course in 
personal efficiency — from an examination one by 
one of the various foundation-stones on which your 
life success must be built. Let us turn back to the 
first lesson and check over one by one the entire 
series. 

Whether you are young or old, your personal 
foundations have long since been laid. Each of the 
different stones of character and habit is in place. 
But there is not one that cannot be taken out and 
replacep 1 with a better block. You know what it 
is to take a stone out of a solid wall once it has been 
laid in that wall : it is a long, slow, hard process. The 
wall has to be propped up temporarily, the hardened 
mortar (the mortar of habit) has to be loosened, 
and when all is said and done you must be sure the 
new stone you put in place of the old is enough 
better to pay for making the effort, and it must not 
be out of keeping with all the other stones around. 

Not one of us is perfect. Some things it will not 
pay to try to change. Others can be patched up a 
little, dressed over, brightened up. A few ought 
to be taken out altogether, because they are rotten 
spots at vital points. 

First of all, what are your rotten stones at vital 
points that must come out bodily if you are going to 
make a success of the rest of your life? Go down 
the list. Put a big, heavy cross against these. 

What plans have you made for changing these? 
Take each one by itself and write a paragraph stat- 
ing succinctly but honestly just what commonsense 

U5 



KEYS TO SUCCESS 

plan you are going to carry out for the complete 
elimination from your character and habit of life 
of that rotten foundation stone. 

Next, take those you feel are not what they ought 
to be. Check these with a single mark. 

Is your education defective? It is never too 
late to learn — to remedy the handicap of a neg- 
lected education, either general or technical. 

Is your memory weak? You can strengthen it, 
whether you are young or old. 

Have you boorish habits? They can be broken 
up and softened into something cheerier and more 
winning. 

Are you too individual in your methods of trying 
to do business? Even at fifty you can begin to 
strive day by day to work with others in team. 

Is your judgment bad? You can try at once 
and try hard to form the habit of consulting others 
who know better than you do. 

Have you failed to make friends? At any age 
a man can find friends if he goes out and looks for 
them, starting with the poor and weak whom he can 
help, and so gradually winning the strong and power- 
ful who will help him. 

Have you been overworking; underfeeding your 
mind and your nerves? You can deliberately seek 
recreation, for successful recreation is peculiarly 
an accomplishment of the latter half of life. You 
have before you in this book the entire list — check 
it over for yourself. 

"Art is long and life is fleeting" — you can't do 
everything, nor should you be discouraged because 
you can't. You must choose just one thing to do 
first, and be sure you put enough ginger into that 
to do it. Then another thing. If life is not long 

246 



FOUNDATIONS 

enough to do everything you would like to, be sure 
you use good commonsense in attending to the most 
practically important first, and leave the less im- 
portant for later attention. 

And now, my Friend, here is my fist. God bless 
you and help you! Don't be sentimental. Don't 
indulge in regrets. But get to work. 



THE END 



247 



Another Forbes Boofy 

Men Who Are Making America 

By B.C. FORBES 

Editor, Forbes Magazine 
Author, "Keys to Success," "Finance, Business and the Business of Life," Etc. 

500 Pages, 6x9. 50 Illustrations. Cloth. $3.00 



NO BOOX of fiction could be as fascinating as these 
true, intimate stories of the men who are shaping 
the destiny of the nation — men whose names are 
on the tongues of millions. You will read this book as 
ravenously as a starving man eats food. And these stor- 
ies will nourish your brain — they will feed your intellect — 
they will enrich your mind — they will inspire you to DO 
instead of to DREAM ! 

Think of John D. Rockefeller admitting that the hard- 
est problem all through his career had been to obtain 
enough capital to do all the business ke wanted! His first 
loan of $2,000 was granted only because he had gained a 
reputation for industry and trustworthiness. 

All the human side of these big men comes out in these 
stories — makes them delightful reading, more absorbing 
than fiction. " How does it feel, Mr. Rosenwald," some- 
one asked the great guiding genius of Sears, Roebuck & 
Co., "to have so many people working for you ? " " I 
never think of it that way," he replied, " I always think 
of them as just working with me." 

Then there's the story of that austere banker, James 
Stillman, who said, "A bank's resources should be handled 
as a general handles his soldiers," and you see in his story 
why and how he does it. 

Throughout the book, in an intensely interesting way, 
Mr. Forbes portrays the achievements of the men who 
are making America, in a way that helps you in your own 
efforts toward success. 

B. C. FORBES PUBLISHING CO. 

299 BROADWAY NEW YORK 



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